


The Poison Makes the Dose

by rivkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demon!Dean, M/M, Multiple Choice, fixit, references to past non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-S9, even if Dean wants to be saved, it’s not going to be that easy.  Because I am indulging myself, there are alternate endings, choose-your-own-adventure style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to giandujakiss and shoofus for beta.

When Crowley didn’t show after Sam repeated the ritual, Sam didn’t let his despair escape him. That bastard was probably watching remotely, laughing at him. Sam couldn’t afford to look ridiculous.

Dean was going to—Sam ought to get him into cold storage, at least. He’d have to be healed upon his resurrection, so deterioration wasn’t much of a worry, but Sam would never hear the end of it if his precious memory foam was stained with corpse-leak.

It should’ve been easier, moving through a world in which Dean was gone for the second time (third if you counted Gabriel’s time trick). But it hurt just as much, like constantly being thrown into a wall. There were two choices: keep moving, or stop.

Sam had seen how ‘stop’ worked out for him.

He went to preserve his brother’s corpse, but Dean wasn’t in his room any more.

There was a rushing, oceanic sound in his ears; his hands were numb; the light in the room went gray and staticky.

Sam managed to slide to the floor, back to the wall. He needed to—Castiel didn’t even know. Castiel might be dead too. Metatron might be typing this all out, cackling with glee. He should pray—

He couldn’t find his voice.

He couldn’t find his brother.

The room still smelled like Dean, sweat and gunpowder mixed with the lemon oil Dean had used to push back against fifty years of dust. He’d tried so hard to make this into their home. And even if his trying had included cutting off pieces of Sam, Sam had very recently discovered that he wasn’t willing to let that be the last act in their relationship.

Sam put his head in his hands and fought against the whirlpool in his head that wanted to drown him.

****

A vampire’s neck had a different texture than a possessed human’s, Dean thought. Like spoiled meat, or maybe Sam would’ve said extra firm tofu. Now that they were all dead, he had time to notice that the blood didn’t smell the way it did coming out of a human: some freaky vampire characteristic Dean didn’t care about, only it would’ve felt more satisfying if they’d run hotter.

Dean shook his head and heard the soft patter of castoff blood. “Crowley, what the fuck?”

They weren’t surrounded by bloodsucking freaks any more, so he figured he had time to ask where Sam was, and why the demon had zapped him into this slaughterhouse, and what had happened with Metatron.

“How do you feel, Dean?” Crowley asked instead of answering Dean’s _perfectly reasonable question_. Crowley sounded pleased. Almost fatherly, which was not a word Dean _ever_ wanted to associate with the little bastard. Dean had half a mind to gut him where he stood, but then it’d be a mess and a half getting home (Crowley might’ve taken him to Serbia for all he knew; the vamps hadn’t done much but scream). Instead he shoved the King of Hell up against a filthy wall, the Blade jumping to Crowley’s neck like it was still thirsty, needing something with more kick.

“Careful, squirrel,” Crowley said, either unconcerned or a better faker than ever. “I’m serious. Aren’t you curious why your insides aren’t still decorating your cheap lumberjack clothes?”

Dean considered. “Not really.” Someone had healed him. Cas if he was lucky, Crowley if he wasn’t. Coming back from mortal wounds was no longer the surprise it had once been, though it remained a disappointment. But Crowley’s words forced him to take an internal census. Desire to kill: pretty high, despite the headless bodies taking up most of the floorspace in the warehouse/den of vampires. Worry about Sam: increasing. Metatron had been gone by the time Sam had gotten to Dean, but Crowley’s evasion wasn’t promising. Injuries: painless, without even the lingering throb of angelic healing. Actually, he felt like he’d just woken up from a full night of sleep after eating three bacon cheeseburgers and then fucking the hottest girl in the bar, and that concluded the inventory.

Crowley put his hand on Dean’s wrist, and Dean allowed him to push the Blade down.

“Pull up your shirt,” Crowley ordered, and rolled his eyes preemptively, so Dean didn’t bother to formulate an innuendo. “I don’t have any designs on your virtue, or even on your vices. This will simply go faster when you see for yourself.”

Worst case, he looked dumb in front of Crowley. Since he didn’t care, he used his free hand to tug his shirts up and—

“I’m a fucking _zombie_?”

Crowley scoffed and shoved him back a step. “I see resurrection hasn’t been kind to your brain cells, but then consider the starting point.” He put up his hands before Dean could grab him again. “Try something else that can animate a body past its expiration date.”

Dean stared at the ragged, unhealed hole in his chest, bloodless and gray.

“What,” Crowley said, almost pityingly, “did you think the Mark was going to make of you?”

“No,” Dean said, backing away, nearly stumbling over a staring head. He wanted to drop the Blade, to show that he absolutely had not become the thing Crowley was suggesting. His hand tightened on the bone, powder-dry against his fingers. “I’d know.” His heel slid back, through the blood.

“What, because all we do is torture and maim? Or because you were all sweetness and light before? Look around you, my boy. That desire you’re feeling, that need to squeeze the world until it gives up the pulp—you already know it.”

Dean had a hole in him, and he felt fresh as a new bottle of Jack. Ten years off the rack—he’d been razor close for years—he was shaking his head, but he knew, he _knew_.

“Dean, Dean,” Crowley said, like he was enjoying the taste of the name. “Your feathered friend has Metatron under control. You lasted long enough for that, anyway. And now,” he continued, rubbing his hands together, “we’re ready to see the Moose.”

****

Angels made a subtle difference in the feel of a room when they appeared. Displaced air, or something. Demons weren’t the same, so when Crowley coughed Sam jumped, rising into a defensive pose as quickly as he could even though his limbs felt like they were made of withered twigs.

“Dean!” Dean was behind Crowley, and silent, but Sam didn’t care, moving towards him because only touch could confirm his return.

Then Sam was slammed back up against the wall, pinned like a butterfly, and Dean was still staring at him, not objecting. “I imagine,” Crowley said, pacing theatrically with his hands behind his back, “right now you’re really regretting not reestablishing those anti-demon wards.”

“Let him go,” Dean growled, too late and too angry at the same time. He was gripping the Blade, his forearm corded with the tension of it, and with his chin lowered he looked ready to slice Crowley into a thousand bloody strips.

Crowley sighed and waved a desultory hand, and Sam was released far enough that he could stand, though he couldn’t move towards Dean. Sam had a microsecond of being blindingly furious that Dean had gotten himself into this, and then shoved it down because there were more urgent problems.

“Now listen, boys. I’m only going to say this once, which is why I organized this reunion. That, and to stop little brother from his mosquito-like attempts to summon me.”

“Crowley.” Dean’s voice made the name into a more serious threat than if he’d mentioned entrails.

“Don’t worry, my boy. I know how hot the blood runs in you. But you needn’t paint the whole town red. Not as long as I have my hand on the leash.”

Sam looked back and forth between them. He wasn’t sure what another major kill would do for Dean. But Crowley wasn’t going to let him have a real talk with his brother, and anyway the mention of leashes made Sam’s own body clench up on Dean’s behalf. He’d been Crowley’s tool too long already. “Do it, Dean,” he urged, hoping that the permission he’d refused before would send Dean into action.

Dean flinched like he’d been hit. But he swiveled towards Crowley, and the hand clutching the Blade lifted, almost mechanically.

His eyes went black.

“Oh God,” Sam blurted. Dean didn’t twitch. And he didn’t strike.

Dean was—Sam’s brain refused to process the information. This was some trick, some extra evil from the Blade. Sam was the one who was supposed to become a thing they hunted. Dean was the one who made the stupidest fucking choices imaginable. But not this.

“He can’t kill me, Moose,” Crowley smarmed, indifferent to Sam’s horror. “Abbadon, well, she had a long time in the job, and I wasn’t the King when she was around. But from the very first time I peeled your brother away from you, going after Pestilence, I knew I could have him. Dean here was born under my reign. I put the Blade in his hand. He’s _my_ Knight.”

Dean grunted. Sweat beaded at his temples, but he was getting no closer to Crowley.

“In fact,” Crowley said, “let’s test this. Dean, kill your brother.”

Dean’s head whipped up. The noise of rage he made was worse than his howl at Gadreel. He even moved a step closer to Crowley.

Crowley shuffled back a few inches, smoothing his hands over the front of his black wool coat. “Well, it was worth a shot. I understand, I can’t ask that just yet. You need a little more time to get used to your new status. I won’t hold it against you. Something simpler, perhaps. I could take the classic Kirk/Uhura route, but I expect you’d enjoy that far too much to be a real test. Dean, cut me a hunk of your brother’s hair.”

Dean’s whole body juddered, like a car that had thrown an axle. But slowly he turned. Sam could’ve run; the way Dean was moving, he could’ve avoided Dean long enough to get behind some spell-barred door.

He wasn’t going to leave Dean alone with Crowley. The demon had spilled too much poison into Dean’s eager ears already. Sam stood his ground as the demon who’d been his brother approached.

“Don’t fight me,” Dean said, the words squeezed through his snarl.

The First Blade was so sharp Sam barely felt the tug as it parted the strands, so close to his hairline that a sudden motion would’ve risked slicing himself open. Dean’s mouth opened in a soundless howl, his eyes like tar.

“Stay away, Moose.” Crowley’s voice seemed to be coming from very far away. “I’m still figuring out what all the buttons do on my new toy. Come at me and you’ll be responsible for turning Dean into Cain all over again.”

With that, he snapped his fingers and they disappeared, fragments of Sam’s hair drifting through the air where Dean had been.

Sam straightened. He allowed himself to shudder in horror one time.

Then he turned and headed for the supply room. He had work to do.

****

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Crowley said, leaning back in his overstuffed chair. “You can’t blame a demon for trying.”

“Pretty sure I can,” Dean shot back. Though really, it was kind of funny if you thought about it—Dean spending more than thirty years trying to take care of Sam, even to the point of resurrecting him and, separately, shoving an angel inside him, then being the one who might end his life. You might even call it ironic.

“Consider it a taste of payback for all the aggro you twits put me through, then. Be good, and I might even approve a conjugal visit for you and the Moose.” Dean waited for the surge of queasy denial that always accompanied digs like that, but nothing. Hunh. “Sit down,” Crowley said, waving his hand. “We have other matters to discuss.”

Hell, Dean was discovering, was very different if you weren’t rack-adjacent. This part (which might well have been topside; Dean wasn’t too clear on the details) was decorated like a brothel, which had to be Crowley’s influence. The air was warm and smelled like sex.

Instead of risking his cool by sitting down on one of the heavily-pillowed chairs and couches and sliding off, Dean leaned against the wall, which was skin-mag pink alternating stripes of silk and velvet. He brought the Blade up between him and Crowley, not because he thought he’d have the strength to use it but just for the comfort of it.

“It’s time to follow your King’s lead,” Crowley said, capital letters and all. “If you don’t, I’ll send wave after wave of lesser demons after your brother until he’s dead for good. Behave, and I’ll leave him in peace. He can die of old age for all I care.”

Dean shifted his weight. “What d’you expect will keep me in line then?”

Crowley smiled and brought his fingertips together, like a low-rent Masterpiece Theater knockoff announcer. “Soon enough, my boy, you won’t give a damn about fighting my orders, as long as I keep throwing you enough raw meat.”

Dean found that way too easy to believe, except for the part about Sam being safe. That part needed fixing. Even if Dean didn’t exactly care as much about coddling Sam as he used to—Sam’s lectures about going too far finally kicking in now that he was black-eyed—he wasn’t going to let Crowley get one over on him. He narrowed his eyes, but kept his mouth shut.

“Now, I’m going to call in the troops,” Crowley said. “Feel free to loom, but try not to talk back. It spoils the impression.”

He clapped his hands, and the room was crawling with demons between one breath and the next, except that they stayed a respectable distance from both him and Crowley. If he wanted to gut any of them, he’d have to lunge. The meatsuit choices made America’s Top Model look like a bunch of dogs.

Dean eyed the assembly—Crowley’s remaining lieutenants, he thought—and imagined how their blood would feel washing hot over his hands, how the bones in their necks would snap after he forced his way through the flesh.

Crowley cleared his throat. Dean thought about cracking wise despite Crowley’s warning, but he wasn’t going to get free of Crowley in the next few minutes and he didn’t want this group of yahoos to see him getting pushed around. Hell was all about who got stood on and who did the standing. Dean didn’t want these demons getting any ideas.

“I need to make an introduction,” Crowley announced. “Dean Winchester is my Knight. I’ve never had one before, but I can already tell that I quite like it. So here’s how it’s going to be. In the absence of conflicting orders from me or attempts on my life, you all answer to him. If he wants pie, you will each and every one of you deliver five kinds. If he wants a blowjob, you will each get on your knees. If he wants a shoulder to cry on about how much he misses his brother—well, you get the picture. Anyone who has questions can ask Dean here. I’m sure he’d be delighted to carve the answers into your skin.”

He smoked out, but the other demons remained. Staring at him, wary. He wondered what Crowley had said about Abbadon’s demise.

“You lookin’ at me?” he asked, attempting a grin. The room cleared in an instant, only one tiny Asian girl remaining an extra five seconds, and when he tilted his head she flickered out too.

“Hey,” he said to the empty air. “When I want a cheeseburger, somebody better show!” He was just fucking with them, though. He hadn’t been hungry since he woke.

Anyway, he could use some time to figure out just how fucked he was. He checked his reflection in one of the ornate, gold-framed mirrors, and spent a few minutes practicing that distinctive demonic eye-flick. The basic switch wasn’t that hard, almost like controlling a blink. Given some time, Dean was pretty sure he could make one green and one black like a really hardcore pirate, or maybe make it look like his eyes were spinning around in their sockets like wheels in a slot machine. He bet you could freak someone out extra with a trick like that.

There was a couch along one wall, red as a beating heart. Dean propped his legs up on the cushions, letting the Blade rest on his stomach while he thought. Its toothy presence was reassuring, like his amulet had been back before God and Dean’s own stupid abandonment issues ruined it.

He didn’t feel that different, all told. Like he’d finally bullseyed a target he’d been aiming at for a while. Hell, Ruby’d just been really bitchy most of the time while she played the long game. When it came down to it, they’d seen humans who didn’t need the black smoke to be the devil’s own, and even the occasional demon like Casey who just didn’t give a fuck about anyone but the dude she loved.

As long as Crowley couldn’t send him against Sam, maybe this wasn’t so bad.

Did he still care about saving people? Honestly, it hadn’t been a priority for a while, since back before they were demon-knifing possession victims on the regular. Punishing the wicked had the side effect of saving others, sometimes, but the thought of rescued civilians didn’t put any fire in his belly. Maybe failing so often and so spectacularly had cured him of that goal even before the Mark ate up the last of his humanity.

Did he still feel like shit for not telling Sam about “Ezekiel” as soon as Sam could’ve made a conscious decision? Yeah. But maybe that was mostly because he couldn’t stand having Sam hate him, and because he’d liked Kevin. Actually, assuming he could get back to the bunker, he could tell Sammy he was sorry all the way now. Fuck knew it’d make his life (unlife? afterlife? death?) better if Sam wasn’t so pissed. That’d be convenient, and demons lied. It was kind of their thing.

The thought buoyed him just until he remembered how well Sam understood demon lies. Sam wouldn’t believe him now even if all he said was that he was sorry Mom died.

Maybe he would have that cheeseburger after all.

****

Advice from Crowley was usually shitty advice, but in this case the sigils were nonnegotiable. Sam put the full set of angels and demon wards back up before even thinking about his next move. He felt—

He was so fucking furious at Dean, for so many reasons, that it was like the rage canceled itself out. He knew his being mad didn’t matter as long as Dean was Crowley’s toy—but at the same time this situation was irrefutable evidence that Dean wasn’t competent to make decisions for himself, much less for Sam. And Sam planned to explain that to him in detail, when he got Dean back.

When he’d been soulless, he’d wanted plenty of things, and he’d gone out and gotten most of them. This was more like the months Gabriel had put him through as the Trickster. He had a goal, and he needed to reach it.

At this point, Sam didn’t know whether praying to Castiel made any difference. He went outside the bunker to try, and he was struck all over again by the beauty of the world. The air was warm and dust-sweet; the sun was out and the green-gilded leaves made dotted shadows against the ground. He heard the rustle of a squirrel running along a branch, and a bird launched itself into the air with a low whirr of wings. This was the world he and Dean had saved, multiple times, despite some very serious efforts to sell them on the idea of immutable destiny. Sam was not going to let this latest atrocity stand.

“Hey, Castiel,” he started. Talking out loud helped, if only to distinguish what he was doing now from what he’d done as a kid. It was different to know than to believe. He needed to be clear that he was negotiating with terrorists, not worshiping the divine. “I, uh, I hope you’re okay. Metatron hasn’t showed up to gloat, so I’m hoping for the best. If you’re hearing this, please, you have to come down. It’s—it’s Dean.”

He stopped. What more was there to say?

The air twitched and Castiel was there.

The cold calculating part of Sam, the one that let him win poker games and put bullets in center mass, told him what to do next. He grabbed Castiel into a hug before the angel could speak, closing his arms tight and fisting his hands against Castiel’s shoulders. Castiel always felt smaller than he should. And the feeling became real as soon as they touched: not quite human contact, and nothing like Dean, but Sam wasn’t alone, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d needed that until Castiel had arrived to give it to him.

“Cas,” Sam said, his brother’s nickname falling too easily from his mouth. There was no need to hide the strained desperation in his tone.

“Sam.” Castiel’s returning squeeze was rib-creaking, once it came.

“Okay,” Sam gasped after about thirty seconds. “Need to breathe now.”

“My apologies,” Castiel said, releasing him. “Metatron—told me about Dean, before we defeated him.” He wasn’t quite achieving his usual blankness; Sam felt a momentary comfort that someone else understood how fundamentally broken the world was.

Sam blew out a breath. “Okay, so what next? How do we get him back?”

“Back?” Castiel tilted his head. “I can’t resurrect him, Sam, my powers are too faded. And none of the host would—”

“He doesn’t need _resurrecting_ ,” Sam snapped. “He needs fixing. He’s a demon!”

Castiel’s mouth fell open. Sam hadn’t seen the angel shocked all that often. Dean would’ve found it hilarious. Apparently Metatron had missed the final act, too, and had prematurely gloated.

“He died, but he came back. It’s got to be the Mark of Cain.”

“Yes,” Castiel said, his shoulders already straightening. “Yes, that is very possible.”

“So we need to restore him to humanity.”

Castiel turned on his thousand-yard stare, which Sam always figured he was more entitled to than most, since it went with accessing millennia of memories spanning multiple planes of existence. “I don’t know if it can be done.”

“Well,” Sam said, “then we’ve got work to do.” He gestured towards the bunker—he’d scrape a path for Castiel, then reset the wards—and Castiel followed him.

****

Crowley couldn’t organize a bar fight in Chicago after the Sox blew the pennant. Either that or (really more likely, but less fun to think) he was testing Dean’s own skills. Crowley had announced the mission in front of his (other) favorite demons, so Dean’d likely get forced if he didn’t go of his own accord. At least this time he didn’t want Dean to come back with captives, and also nobody was going to call him a little bitch unless they really wanted their vocal cords stuffed under their fingernails. And—okay, so maybe Dean had to give Crowley some credit—he’d chosen a group of really obviously not pacifist werewolves, so Dean didn’t _want_ to turn the job down. Ten demons were almost a match for having Sammy at his back.

Dean hadn’t bothered to master the freaky telekinesis thing, if he even had it apart from calling the Blade (seriously, someone needed to write a guidebook covering this whole Mark of Cain business), so there was a lot of running, some ducking, and a satisfying amount of blood.

He had his knee on the last one’s back, pressing her into the ground as he pulled her head back for easy access to her throat, when minion #3 came running up to him. “Dean!”

Dean looked up, letting his annoyance with the interruption show. The air was a few degrees chillier than was comfortable, and he wanted to be done. Below him, the werewolf still struggled; he could feel her body shake with the knowledge of inevitable death, but she was a fighter.

“Um, Sir Dean?” the demon tried again. It was in a young body, a teen boy or a girl not much older, spiky hair and a clean-scrubbed look that it probably found ironic.

Dean sliced and felt the warm spray of blood. The werewolf slumped, irrelevant now. “Yeah?”

“We thought you’d want to see.”

He sighed, wiping his hands on the werewolf’s back, and stood. Fucking demons and their fucking love of dramatic suspense.

He wasn’t expecting puppies. There were already two little bodies limp on the ground out back of the werewolves’ house. The remaining three were shoulder to shoulder, snarling at the assembled demons, one of whom was poking at the group with a stick.

“Hey!” Dean said sharply. The stick-wielder stopped. “Okay, tell me you’re sure we’re not just looking at real Fidos here, ‘cause that’d just be embarrassing.”

“There was a nursery,” the demon wearing the Asian girl said. “They were in it.”

“Ah, fuck,” Dean said, scrubbing his free hand through his hair before he remembered it was still sticky with blood. “Okay. You,” he pointed at the demon who’d dragged him over and made this his problem, “get me a bag.”

To say that Garth was unhappy to be woken in the middle of the night and presented with three squirming, whining werewolf orphans was a slight understatement, especially when Dean refused to cross his threshold.

“Sam did call you, right? Told you what’s the what, kept you updated, yeah?”

Dean probably would’ve taken a mean enjoyment in the flash of hurt that crossed Garth’s face even before. So, that’d be a no. But Garth was competent enough that there still might be a Devil’s Trap just inside. If Dean had to guess, he’d wager he was powerful enough to get out, but it probably wouldn’t be fun. He let the bag fall to the ground; the noises from within increased, then subsided. “Look, you got two choices here. Take these puppies, raise ‘em right, keep ‘em from killing.”

Garth’s eyes darted back and forth from the pile on the ground to Dean’s blood-sticky face. “I guess I don’t need to ask what the other one is.”

Dean tilted his head. “Fair warning, Garth. I don’t know why or how, but I kinda like you.” He let his eyes unveil the demon. “But if you get in my way, I’ll gut you, and I’ll like that too.”

Garth’s whole body seemed to shrink in on itself, not in fear but something else, some other emotion Dean didn’t want to know about. He opened his mouth, and Dean buzzed out before he had to hear a word.

That part was cool.

The demon in the Asian girl was waiting for him, back in Crowley’s bordello. Dean raised his eyebrow.

“I was just checking to see if you wanted anything,” she said, leaning forward a little to emphasize two of the things he might want.

Dean appreciated the view for a moment, then shook his head. “What’s your name?” Might as well start learning them. Calling them by the numbers he’d assigned them in his head would be funny, but probably not the best idea in the long run.

“Teresa,” she said.

It was way too early for him to be recruiting potential allies against Crowley. At the very least, Crowley would be on guard for it, and any demons he assigned to Dean would be reporting back. Dean sat himself down on yet another overly stuffed couch and splayed his legs invitingly as he leaned back. “Well, Teresa, I’m Dean Winchester. And I wouldn’t mind a beer.”

She sashayed forward. She’d hidden her eyes, so they were a sweet brown, and her lips were freshly glossed. Her hair was just long enough to brush her shoulders, which were bare except for the spaghetti straps of her black satin top. Her skirt was red and her heels were chunky, which made him wonder how effective she’d been at hunting werewolves, and that was about all the interest Dean had in what she was wearing.

She got close enough to touch, but didn’t sit on his lap uninvited like he’d mostly expected. She did hand him a Corona, though; he hadn’t even noticed her make it appear. “You know, we have a lot in common, Dean.”

“Our keen fashion sense?”

She smirked. “You’re all alone in there. No previous occupant to send to the basement. I picked this body up from a coma ward. She was just dumped at a hospital in New Jersey, probably by her pimp. Seemed like a waste. And I’ve got to admit, it’s different, having the place to yourself.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, taking a sip. Beer tasted different in Hell, or maybe that was what beer was going to taste like from now on and all his kicks would have to come from slitting throats.

Growing bolder, she sat down next to him, not quite brushing his shoulder. Coy and deliberate, nothing like how Sam would’ve done it. “The body’s pretty, though, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Dean acknowledged, rolling the bottle in between his palms. Sam wasn’t here, and the demon was. The Blade, safe in its wrapping, throbbed against his thigh. He wondered if she knew how it wanted her blood; wondered if that turned her on like it did him.

“We could have some fun,” she suggested. “You, me, and Hui-fang.”

Dean deposited the Corona on the rickety curliqued end table next to him and twisted, snake-fast, to grab her hands and pin them back against the couch cushions. Her wrists were so thin; her pulse rabbited against his palms as she gasped and pressed herself up, trying to grind against him. She smelled like cinnamon.

Dean bit his lip, and struggled against the desire to rip her apart with his teeth. After a few long, shuddering moments, he was back in control. He could see his face, reflected and distorted, in her eyes. She could’ve done the same, if she’d been wearing her own face.

“Yeah,” he said, and cracked his neck. “Let’s have some fun.”

Her expression began to change even before he began to speak: “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio—”

It hurt like fuck, but he still had his tattoo as a wall against demon home invasion, and it or the Mark kept him intact long enough to get her vomiting out of the girl’s body.

Who blinked, dazed, and then began screaming him in a language he didn’t understand.

Like Dean wouldn’t be able to recognize Teresa’s retread of Ruby’s bullshit story. Dean didn’t know if Ruby had faked the whole thing—it might’ve been easier than finding an actual hot young braindead chick—but he did know that his own preferences wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. Crowley probably had a list up in the demon break room.

He wasn’t saying he wouldn’t fuck a demon ever, but the thought of some girl screaming in her head while some black-eyed monster fucked her – it just hit a little close to home, was all.

Dean raised his finger to his lips, cautioning, and she cut herself off. He wondered what, if anything, she remembered or understood. “Yo!” he said, loud in the airless room. “Demons, assemble!”

He had to admit, he was a little impressed at how fast they arrived.

The hot acrid smell beside him indicated that the girl had pissed herself, which was understandable but also a reminder of what had too often happened on the rack, not to mention the couch was covered with really slippery fabric. Dean stood and moved half a step away from her. The demons moved back in near-perfect unison.

“I’m not gonna pretend I’m the smart one,” he told them. “But do yourselves a favor and don’t treat me like a fucking moron. You,” he pointed at the androgynous demon, a/k/a Minion #3, “get her to—I dunno, someplace they’ll take good care of her. Don’t think I won’t check.”

The demon nodded and hurried to comply, even as his nose wrinkled as he approached. Hui-fang (he doubted Teresa had lied about that) eeped with terror, then disappeared with the demon.

“Now, you”—he pointed at the puppy-poker this time—“clean up this couch, and you—” that one was random—“find me a place to hang out that isn’t straight out of House of the Rising Sun.”

****

“So get this,” Sam said, swiveling the book so that Castiel could read for himself, assuming he could read Old French. “All the sources agree that Cain started out human. He only became a demon when he spilled his brother’s blood, or maybe when God cursed him afterwards.”

Castiel tilted his head with that particular ‘yes, and?’ look that said he found Sam, like most humans, mostly pointless. Which Sam supposed was a step up from abomination.

“What that means is that Cain was human. His Knights were all once human, too. They’re stronger, but there’s no reason that the same cure I used on Crowley wouldn’t work on Dean. All we need is a way to get him alone. Maybe a distraction for Crowley. Do you think the other angels would—?”

He stopped, because he hadn’t known that Castiel could look that disapproving. “The other angels are far too busy putting Heaven back in order, and far too disillusioned with me. Recall that I’m not even full-powered.”

That was a problem Sam would have to deal with later; Castiel seemed fine, even if he said he was weak. “Okay, right. So we create some kind of non-angelic distraction, grab Dean—” He glanced towards the bookshelves at the back of the library. There had to be a spell in one of those grimoires that could be used on the King of Hell. As for catching Dean, Sam was half tempted to put a pie in the middle of a Devil’s Trap. Maybe with a box propped up on a stick over it, with a string to pull when Dean came to investigate. Dean always did go for the classics.

“Let me ‘recap,’” Castiel said, using the air quotes fingers that Sam dearly wished he’d never learned. “You intend that the two of us capture a Knight of Hell, we have to assume against his will, and hold him long enough to cure him with your blood, while Crowley knows where you are, knows you can cure demons if given enough time, and presently commands the legions of Hell.”

Sam shrugged. “That about covers it.”

Castiel’s voice had taken on its warrior’s growl. “It’s not the worst plan you’ve ever had. That’s not a compliment, by the way.”

“Dean will help. Once we show him we can do it.” Dean had a history of refusing to trust Sam at the worst possible times. But Sam wasn’t going to let that happen, not now.

Castiel turned and headed towards the kitchen. Bemused, Sam rose to follow him. He opened the refrigerator and began poking around.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, when he couldn’t restrain himself any longer.

“Dean always says that everything looks better after a few beers. I’m testing the theory.”

Sam snorted despite himself. “Yeah, pretty sure even he doesn’t believe that.” The sight of the kitchen, still pristine from Dean’s last cleaning binge, reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in—well, counting wasn’t going to do anyone any good. But fainting with hunger also wasn’t going to get him any closer to rescuing Dean, so he went to shoulder Cas out of the way and make himself a sandwich. And one for the angel, too.

****

Another day, another massacre. Dean had the nagging suspicion that each death made him like the process of killing even more, but what was he supposed to do? He was a weapon, and Crowley was pointing him at monsters who deserved to be carved up. Dean was pretty sure about that, anyhow.

After the turmoil of the last few years, Crowley was taking advantage of Dean to consolidate his power, and that meant going after all the non-demon monsters organized enough to give him trouble. Alpha vamp (Dean would’ve gloated over that one even if he hadn’t been black-eyed); alpha wolf; alpha pishtaco; alpha ghoul (that one too, because fuck those guys—there was nothing he could do for Adam, but he could chalk up a few kills in his memory); alpha wendigo; alpha rawhead. There were a bunch more, obviously, but Crowley wanted him to pace himself, or that was what he said when Dean was itching to go leave Crowley’s mansion again, the rawhead’s blood drying too fast on his skin.

“Don’t you see, Dean, without me you’d be just another ravening animal,” he continued in a tone of sweet reason, which only made Dean angrier. “You need to be made to pace yourself. After all, killing _is_ the only thing you’re good for.”

“Oh, I’m also a fantastic lay,” Dean told him, his lip curling.

Crowley pursed his lips. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, which Dean supposed was probably for the best. Demon lusts were mostly nondiscriminatory, and it was even odds he’d bend over if Crowley told him to. Crowley might even want him to enjoy it (though then again so had Alastair). Dean had bloodier problems. He hadn’t wanted to fight the last set of kill orders, though he’d resisted Crowley’s instruction to stop using his demonic telekinesis to pull pranks on lesser demons; that shit was hilarious now that he’d gotten the mechanics locked down.

Being Crowley’s lackey was not okay. An eternity of being Crowley’s lackey was even less okay. From Abbadon’s example, he had the idea that in a couple hundred years he could figure out how to break Crowley’s hold, but he didn’t want to wait that long. Plus, given the way every cell in his body cried out for the next thing to tear apart, Crowley might be right about Dean turning into a mindless dog.

And now he’d tipped Crowley over into lecture mode, which was incredibly annoying, the way he’d always _pretended_ it was with Sam. First there was the repeated warning about not exorcising meatsuits for trivial offenses, since good bodies were so hard to come by. If Dean had known how annoying Crowley would get about that, he might’ve found another way to deal with Teresa.

Then, for good measure, Crowley put his hands behind his back and paced, like the Napoleonic asshole he was. “You need to learn what it is to be a demon. Those strange feelings you have—things are changing for you, my boy. Accidental genocides, inappropriate erections, all that. You listen to me, and you’ve got some chance of turning that uncontrolled bloodlust into a more manageable joie de murder.”

That might even be true, twitchy post-rawhead fingers notwithstanding. It just meant he needed to get to Sam even more. If anyone could figure out how to get rid of him, it’d be Sam. And what had gotten said back when Dean was human didn’t have much meaning now. Sam could kill demons, no matter if he loved them or didn’t.

“You see, Dean, your limited intelligence reaches its relative peak when dealing out destruction, which helps explain your appallingly overpopulated trophy list. I’m simply—”

The sudden shock of pain was a relief from the monologue. It was like he was being shot through with barbed arrows, pulled backward and inside out. It wasn’t a feeling he thought he could have off of the rack.

He saw Crowley’s face contort in anger, and then it was lights out.

****

Seeing Dean wincing away from the edges of the Devil’s Trap was like being gut-punched. Dean had landed in a heap, knocking over the chair they’d had prepared for him and sprawling on the floor, his back to Sam. This part of the bunker was always chilly, with the cool of the underground emanating from the rough concrete floors. Sam wondered whether Dean felt it any more. Dean got to his hands and knees, shook his head and shoulders like he was shaking off a hit, then stood up with his neck still bent. Sam couldn’t tell if he was hiding from himself or from Sam.

There had to be meaning in the fact that Dean’s human name still summoned him.

Castiel looked over at Sam, apparently willing to take Sam’s cues.

“Dean,” Sam said. He’d spent a full day after their preparations were complete talking himself up for this, and he felt flayed regardless.

As always, having Sam to brace himself against seemed to make Dean stronger, and angrier. Dean spun, and Sam got a look at just how well being a Knight of Hell suited him. He was dressed in head-to-toe black—leather jacket, black jeans, black shitkicker boots, even an unfaded black t-shirt. Sam was willing to bet his guns and knives would be black as well. His jewelry was gone, though of course what Sam still missed the most was the amulet, which hadn’t been a casualty of this change. The absence of color washed his skin out and took away some of Dean’s golden gleam, but the bags under his eyes were barely visible. Sam had the unwelcome thought that in a lot of ways being a demon agreed with Dean.

“You gonna get this party started any time soon?” Dean said, not anywhere near as cool as he thought he was.

“Why?” Sam challenged, like he was supposed to. “You have somewhere to be?”

Dean sneered, like Sam had just suggested splitting the salad plate. That was Dean trying to prod him into their standard pattern, and Sam couldn’t let that happen. “You know Crowley’s gonna be heading right here to get me out.”

“I doubt we’re that lucky,” Castiel said, almost making Sam jump. Dean seemed surprised too, his eyebrows lifting as if he were just now noticing the angel. “We could likely recapture Crowley in a direct assault.” (Sam had to be impressed at Castiel’s ability to bluff, given Castiel’s privately expressed opinion on the matter.)

“Yeah?” Dean let his eyes go black. Sam had seen the sight too many times already in his memories. It had lost some of its ability to shock, if not any measure of its horror. “You can’t even keep me in here.” He clenched his fists, and the room began to shake. Dust drifted from the ceiling, and fine cracks started to appear on the concrete floor, reaching for the lines of the Devil’s Trap.

Sam reared back and slapped the switch they’d set up. Dean had been the one to sketch out the plans in the first place, which Sam had found tucked into a corner in the library. Dean could’ve gotten it running a ton faster, but he and Castiel had eventually figured out the projectors. Red light lanced out, painting the floor and the ceiling with lines of light in the familiar pattern, so that any physical break in the lines would be irrelevant.

Dean stopped and stared, his mouth open in frank admiration. “Not bad, Sammy,” he admitted. He’d probably notice that if he generated enough debris some of it would break the beams of light, but for the moment he seemed to be done testing his confinement. “But if you really want me here, you need to shoot me with a couple of those Devil’s Trap bullets.”

Sam exchanged a look with Castiel. It might be a good idea, if it became necessary.

“I’m gonna cure you,” Sam said. “Not sure I want a bullet in your brain when that happens.” He withdrew the case from his jacket pocket and let Dean see the syringe.

“Yeah, that worked so well last time!” Dean shifted his weight from heel to heel, back to fight-or-fight mode (even human Dean hadn’t been good at the ‘flight’ option).

“The theory is sound,” Castiel weighed in, stepping closer but still well out of Dean’s reach. “We can restore your humanity.”

“And who fucking says I want it!” Dean snapped. “Dump five tons of cement in here and I’ll be stuck, that’s a fuckton safer.”

“I don’t care what you want,” Sam told him, irony bitter in his mouth.

He could tell by the twist of Dean’s lips that Dean was following his thoughts. “Sam, this ain’t me being tired of life. If I get out—”

“Yeah, and it was so safe to interrupt the Trials and stuff a random angel into my body,” Sam shot back. “The body count on that one hardly broke the dozens, right? If we’re not counting leaving the gates of Hell open.”

Dean’s hands opened and closed on empty air. “You were the one who said we had to stop hurting other people to save each other!”

“Curing you isn’t hurting other people,” Sam said, relentless. “I was just dying. You’re a demon, and even if we do wrap you in every sigil and rune we can find in the Bunker, someday Crowley or one of his minions is going to figure out how to free you, and Cas and I aren’t always gonna be around to stop it.”

That stung, he could tell. Dean looked away, eyes still black. Sam wondered whether it would be better if Dean had them under control, or if that would mean that the evil was settling even deeper into his bones.

“You down with this, Cas?” Dean appealed.

“I’ve rarely found your plans probable in any respect,” Castiel said. “And their success tends to trigger unforeseen consquences. However, they do tend to succeed in their immediate aims at an astonishing rate. I don’t think having you as an active Knight of Hell in Crowley’s service is advisable, especially with Heaven in such a state of disorganization. And I know it’s not what you want. As a result, I’ve decided to follow Sam’s lead for the time being, despite the evident risk of further disaster.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Sam told him dryly. “So, Dean, are you going to sit down and let me inject you, or do we need the chains?”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Dean’s eyes flickered back to human green. “Demons don’t _cooperate_. Demons fuck shit up. You step into this circle, I’m gonna hurt you, just like Crowley said.”

Sam was so done with this. “Then maybe you should’ve thought of that before you took the fucking Mark of Cain! It wasn’t like it was called the Cutie Mark!”

“Dude,” Dean said, sounding equal parts disgusted and impressed, “how do you even know about that?”

“How do _you_?” Sam asked.

Dean scoffed and mumbled something about bronies.

“If I could return the conversation to the subject of Dean’s demonic essence,” Castiel interjected.

“You’re no fun,” Dean grumbled. But he turned and righted the chair that was in the trap with him. When he sat, he spread his legs like his balls were the size of grapefruits and folded his arms, staring up at Sam defiantly. “So you’re gonna inject me with your purified human blood, hunh. And I’m just gonna sit still for that?”

“Yeah, you are,” Sam agreed. “I listened to what you said about Cain. He got his bloodlust under control, after thousands of years as a demon. He did it for love. _And you will too_.”

Dean’s eyes went wide and human, the bottle-green of his irises more striking now for how Sam had missed it. His lips parted and his cheeks colored, as if even saying the word ‘love’ in his presence embarrassed him. “Come on, Dean,” Sam taunted. “You care about me so much, you don’t want me to leave you? Then step up. A demon can’t be my brother.”

Dean was terrified, of course. The trick was having him off balance enough to ignore his own fears. Barking orders like Dad would’ve wasn’t ideal, but Sam wasn’t going to leave any tool unused. Sure enough, Dean had stiffened in his seat.

After a moment, Dean bit his lip and lowered his eyes. “I won’t fight you. But it’s not gonna work, Sam. Crowley’s gonna be on your ass twenty-four seven.”

That was as much consent as Sam expected. He didn’t gloat about how fast Dean had caved, mostly because he didn’t want Dean himself to notice. “Give up the Blade,” he said. “Once you do that, we can get started.”

Dean’s reflexive snarl would’ve made a lesser man quail.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam said.

“I can call it to me whenever I want to,” Dean said, like a surly little kid.

“Then you shouldn’t have a problem with letting us lock it up,” Sam said logically. “Just so there won’t be any accidents. I don’t want to end up like Abel—or Tessa.”

To his credit, Dean did look guilty when Sam said that. “Fine,” he said, pouting. Between one breath and the next, the Blade was on the floor in front of him. Castiel approached, careful as if he were dismantling a bomb, and scooped it up. They didn’t know if the box they’d covered in Enochian sigils would do any good against the bond between Dean and the Blade, but distance might help a little.

As soon as Castiel had left the room and wouldn’t see Dean’s suffering, Sam stepped forward, into the Devil’s Trap, and put his hand on Dean’s neck. The skin was warm, human-standard.

He pressed more firmly, and Dean tilted his head, exposing his neck. Sam could’ve used another injection site, but this would circulate through Dean’s system faster than the arm, and frankly he wanted to see Dean submit, needed the reassurance.

Murmuring prayers that made Dean’s eyes go black, he began.

****

Dean had probably forgotten more about Hell than he remembered. Memory was kind in the way that life was not. Still, the pain of the rehumanization treatment had to rank in the top three of his torture experiences, at least. Sam and Cas ended up chaining him to the chair, with sigils sharpied onto the backs of his hands, after he’d shoved Sam halfway across the room without even meaning to.

It wasn’t only physical, not even mostly. Taking Sam’s blood was like getting injected with raw knowledge of his own failures, again and again. It felt like the essence of every time he hadn’t been fast enough, strong enough, good enough. Every shitty thing he’d done, aboveground and below, coming back to bubble through his bones and sizzle through his nerves. Dean thought maybe being a demon was forgiving yourself your infinite crimes, which meant that this was the opposite. He cried like a little kid each time. The tears seemed the same as ever, not taking any of the blackness with them.

From Sam’s worried examinations after each dose, Crowley hadn’t taken nearly as badly to the treatment. The low point was when he had to demand new clothes because he’d pissed himself, which wouldn’t have been fun to admit to a stranger. Sam unchained him and brought him a bucket, ignoring Dean’s snarking until he broke and suggested that the alternative was a hose, and then watched Dean to make sure he didn’t wash away any of the lines on the Devil’s Trap. Dean didn’t mention how he didn’t think that would matter at all if he got serious about escaping—which he would the moment he heard that Crowley was within range—and just made fun of Sam’s voyeurism. Afterwards, Sam gave him faded jeans and plaid to wear.

“Aw, come on,” Dean cajoled. “I know you washed my stuff.” No way would Sam let piss-stinking clothes just sit around.

“Sorry,” Sam said, not sorry. “I guess I don’t like seeing you dressed like a Hot Topic vampire.”

“Dude,” Dean said, genuinely offended. “Plenty of bad guys wear black. Oh hey, did I tell you, I iced the alpha vamp? Whole bunch of alphas, actually. Crowley’s got kind of a thing.”

Sam blinked a couple of times. “Congratulations, I guess.” He didn’t sound convinced. They were never going to get anywhere on the subject of ‘good you can do by going evil,’ and Dean had been on both ends of that conversation too many times to count, so he didn’t push.

And then it was time for the next injection. Sam paced while Dean went through the sweats and the shakes and the crying. Sam did push-ups and sit-ups, and Dean didn’t have the energy to make fun of the yoga mat he’d put down at the edge of their demon containment chamber.

“Sam,” Dean said after watching Sam do a complicated jumprope routine with what had to be the world’s longest jumprope to accommodate his freakish size, “you need to stop. Go have something more than Gatorade, okay? _I’m_ starving just watching you, and I don’t need to eat.”

Sam glared at him. His hair was plastered to his forehead and neck with sweat, his clothes sopping with it too, and he was breathing too hard to speak. Which was exactly Dean’s point: This wasn’t exercise. This was punishment.

“You won’t do anyone any good if you’re fainting,” Dean coaxed.

“I’m not interested in ‘anyone,’” Sam said. He rested his weight against the wall and leaned over, bracing his hands on his upper thighs.

“Sammy,” Dean said, pained. He hated to see Sam like this, all that anger sharpened to a blade that could cut you from across the room. “Don’t, you know, don’t destroy yourself for me.”

“What, that’s your job?”

Dean didn’t know exactly which one of them he was supposed to be destroying in Sam’s version, but maybe that was the point. “I’m just saying. It’s not worth it if you burn yourself out to save me. If you look at the last couple years, you gotta ask if we learned anything from my deal, and your year hunting Lilith.”

“I learned,” Sam said, and if Dean had been human the tone would’ve been enough to make him run out of the room and get dead drunk. “I learned that lying and destroying your relationship with your brother isn’t worth what you think it is.”

Dean winced. Sam’s focus on saving him had made it easy to forget just how mad Sam still was. Probably had made it easy for Sam, too.

Sam’s eyes narrowed and he nearly spat the next words out. “Crowley can’t have you. That’s it.”

“Careful, Sammy. You sound like a jealous boyfriend.”

“Well, you sound like a bitchy one,” Sam tossed back, and Dean was impressed into silence.

****

Dean swore and yelled throughout his morning injection, subsiding to scattered curses and mumbling about fucking drain cleaner. Sam mostly didn’t have trouble tuning it out. This wasn’t Dean, not really. This was an infection.

“Don’t think you’re making me better,” Dean said, which made Sam start guiltily. Dean knew him so well, there was a good chance he’d roughly figured out what Sam was thinking.

“I’m going for ‘human,’” Sam said. “Pretty sure that’s better by definition.”

Dean snorted. “You know, Sammy, the worst thing I ever did to you, I did before the Mark. And if you change me back, I’m still not gonna be sorry I saved you. Sorry I didn’t find a way to tell you, yeah, and sorry as hell about Kevin. But wanting you to live—no.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah, Dean, I get it. You’re never going to let me choose for myself.”

“Ah, fuck you,” Dean snapped, which was at least different. “You’re mad I didn’t leave you to die. News flash: I tried that with Lucifer, and did that end the shitshow? No, it opened up a whole new chapter with Cas gone wild and you soulless. We got the Mother of All and the Leviathans with a new and exciting way to end the world bloody! Sacrifice doesn’t work for us. Maybe God doesn’t find it _pleasing_ when it comes from a Winchester. So yeah, I dragged you out of that chapel and I called on an angel. You can get pissed about what happened next and how I didn’t tell you as soon as I could. You _should_. But not about saving you, Sam. Not that.”

Sam blinked at him a couple of times, then swallowed. “Okay. You’re still wrong. But that’s ten times more of a reason than you ever gave me before.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, well, funny thing about being a demon: I don’t feel like such a piece of shit. Being a fuckup’s not so bad, this side of the line. Helps me use my words, you know?”

“No,” Sam said, considering, “I’m pretty sure that’s pure Dean Winchester logic, not demonic. Sadly, I’ve known enough demons to tell the difference.”

“Look at you,” Dean said, grinning. “All enlightened and not stereotyping.”

He had to hope that this was Dean’s last-ditch attempt to throw off the cure. If that was true, there were some things he needed to say, just in case it didn’t work. “When this is over, when you’re back to you, things have to change. I get that I can’t stop you from making decisions I won’t like. But shutting me out, trying to keep me from taking my own risks—it always makes things worse. And I know I did my part. No more, for either of us. We share everything or we share nothing.”

Dean looked away, drawing his shoulders in. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Sam.”

“I’m not,” Sam said, and realized with some surprise that he was certain of himself all the way through. None of the niggling suspicion and guilt that had made him defensive back when he was drinking demon blood; none of the resentment that had tainted earlier vows, even when they were the right thing to do. Equality between them was something he needed for himself. And if Dean couldn’t give it as a human, then that would be the end, and it would hurt, and he’d still love Dean even if he couldn’t live with him.

Dean glanced at him, then away again, frowning. His eyes were black mirrors, as if he were too distracted by his own thoughts to keep up the façade. Sam had to believe that was a good sign.

****

Crowley’s “Winchester!” made Dean jump—he landed in a fighting crouch, whipping his head around. Crowley was standing behind him. They were back in the bordello room, except a whole bunch of beaver shots had been added to the walls, including one that was a close-up painting of a chick who’d obviously never heard of Brazilians.

“Really?” Crowley’s disgusted voice broke through Dean’s reflexive lust. “Ahem.” Crowley snapped his fingers, and the walls were back to their pink-and-red stripes.

Wait. Could he even do that?

Dean called the Blade to himself, but when it appeared in his hand it was and wasn’t itself, flickering like a spirit.

“Crowley,” Dean growled.

“You don’t call, you don’t write.” Crowley spread his hands like he was trying to convince an invisible audience just how reasonable he was. “I had to do _something_ to check on your well-being.”

Demons didn’t dream. A job perk, or something. He could close his eyes and not see blood if he didn’t want to. Crowley must’ve overridden that protection and invaded his sleep, which meant Dean hadn’t been grabbed out of the Bunker.

There was a pattern to this, and it started with Dean asking Crowley what he wanted.

Dean stared at him, chin down. He’d had a pretty good stone killer face before the Mark, and he doubted it’d gotten any less scary; Crowley swallowed. Still, he was the King of Hell. Tugging self-importantly at the bottom of his jacket, Crowley somehow managed to look down his nose at Dean. “You have to know that this game of keepaway just puts Sam at the top of my to-do list.”

“But here you are,” Dean told him, glancing dismissively around the dream-room. “Why is that, exactly? Can’t remember the address? Get a pencil, you can write it down.”

“Tell me, Dean-O, how much do you think the Moose resents that he can’t get free of you, no matter how hard he tries? You pant after him like a bitch in heat. You’re the bad penny who just keeps turning up.” Every sentence brought Crowley closer. “You’re the ghost in the house, haunting what you should’ve left behind. You’re a curse and you. Just. Won’t. Leave.” He was inches away, and Dean could feel phantom spittle hitting his face. “You should inflict yourself on someone more deserving than poor suffering Sammy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Dean said, and brought up the dream-Blade. Dream-Crowley’s mouth went slack with surprise as Dean lifted him up, yellow-white lightning crackling around him. The dream dissolved before Dean could get the pleasure of watching him die.

Dean opened his eyes and he was back in the world, strapped into his chair because demons didn’t need no stinking beds. All he could see was the faint outline of the door from the hallway lights. Someone who’d spent less time in Purgatory might’ve feared that anything could be hiding in the blackness around him, but Dean would’ve heard even a held breath. The room they were keeping him in wasn’t warm, and some of the smell from the archives leaked in. Dean never had liked the scent of research; that was Sam’s turn-on.

What an idiot he was. Even if he pulled this off, Sam would never—Sam was never going to approve of him, much less forgive him.

But—

He hadn’t lied, after Metatron had stabbed him. For all that the Blade made things red and simple, he didn’t want to be in that haze. Yeah, the high was great, but he was going to run out of supernatural trash faster than he was going to run out of killing joy. Or suppose Crowley got him back and found that Antichrist kid, or that kitsune who’d sworn to grow up and kill Dean back—right now, he’d take them out without even meaning to. And if some little hunter like Krissy got in his way—

He’d even take Sam out. That was no ‘if,’ because Sam would get in the way of the rest of them, standing up to Dean because of his stupid fucking hero complex.

Kind of funny, how he’d spent so much time saying ‘no’ to Dickariah and Michael, and ended up saying ‘yes’ to something even bloodier.

Being a demon hadn’t changed a godforsaken thing. He was ruined one way or another. Maybe the nausea he felt at the thought of striking Sam down was proof that, like Sam said, how he felt for his brother was the worst part of him and not the best. That’d explain how his obsession outlived his humanity, anyhow.

If he gutted Sam with the Blade in a rage blackout, it’d be like God and destiny _won_ , making him into some pathetic photocopy of Cain, pissing on Dean for all the times he’d saved Sam.

Where the fuck was Sam, anyway? He had too much time to think, tied up in here.

Dean stared at the darkness and the blank stone walls beyond and waited for the next dose.

****

“What’s that smell?” Castiel said, tilting his head as he sniffed, which made him look really weird.

Sam hadn’t noticed anything. Reading ancient languages in a desperate search for more information about speeding up demon cures tended to require all his focus. “Hunh?”

He looked around the library and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe there was something in the air, like old pennies—

“Sam!” He followed Castiel’s pointing finger to the entrance stairs, where black smoke was oozing down towards them.

“It’s not a demon,” Castiel said grimly. Sam was already running for the security cameras.

There was a huge tanker trunk backed up to the entrance, and an airlock-sized plastic tunnel pumping its contents through the cracks in the door. Sam didn’t need the sleazy wink one worker turned to give the security camera to know that these were demons.

“I’ll do my best to keep it contained,” Castiel said.

“I’ll—figure out how to get them out,” Sam agreed, hurrying for the tunnels. When this was over, he was going to help Dean install the holy water sprinklers and automated gunports that Dean had fantasized about.

He swung by the dungeon, because Dean might have some useful ideas. He’d no sooner rushed out an explanation then the chains around Dean burst, every link exploded like a popcorn kernel.

“No!” Sam said. “You’ve got to stay there. Crowley hasn’t been able to reach you.”

“I’m not gonna _stand here_ while—” Dean stopped. He blinked rapidly. “Positive pressure.”

“What?”

“This place was designed—no, you know what, just listen. The AC’s in the control room, left side, third console. There’s a switch on the far right, with a dial underneath. Dial as far up as it goes, hit the switch. And cover your mouth!” he yelled at Sam’s already retreating back.

Sam jogged to the control room and followed instructions. The noise was amazing—powerful fans, he realized. The Men of Letters didn’t build small.

He inspected the stairs to the main level carefully and saw no traces of the black cloud. Nostrils flaring—Dean would’ve had a field day with the dog jokes if he’d seen—he inched up the stairs. “Castiel!” he yelled, hardly hearing himself over the jetlike noise of the fans.

“Sam!” Castiel was suddenly in front of him. “There are ten demons outside.” When Sam checked the cameras, he saw two tangled in the plastic tubing they’d used to pump whatever this gas was, while the others were fanning out, ready to fight.

This was an exploratory push, more a tap at the door than an assault. Crowley could do so much more.

The garage had an elevator to get the vehicles out, but Sam was worried the noise and vibration would be noticeable even with the fans going. He gestured for Castiel to follow him, and headed towards the entrance to the hidden airshaft.

He was glad he’d kept up his fitness regime. Climbing roughly three stories on an ancient metal ladder bolted to the inside of a concrete tube would’ve been a workout even if demons hadn’t been waiting for them topside.

Sam let Castiel go first after he popped the hatch, on the theory that the angel could weather a blow to the head better than Sam could. But they were still unobserved—Crowley had apparently never gotten a look at the schematics for the Bunker, a small favor. Sam nodded at Castiel, and they split up, approaching the demons from both sides.

Dean had to be going nuts down there. Sam figured he had five minutes, max, before Dean said fuck it and broke out, fully exposing himself to Crowley as soon as he crossed the boundary of the Bunker.

The first demon died easily; the second less so, and then he was facing four pissed-off demons with his knife in one hand and his gun in the other.

He fired six Devil’s Trap bullets, putting two of them down before the gun clicked empty and he was bowled over. He managed to get his knife between his body and the demon’s—a guy wearing a plumber’s uniform with a patch that said ‘Dave’—and turned the fall into a setup for a kick, flinging the body from on top of him with his feet and managing to hit the next demon as it used its mind to shove him back against a tree. The demon’s concentration broke and Sam slammed his knife into the join of shoulder and chest, pulling it free even before the fire-crackle of demon death burned out.

“Sam!”

Sam took Castiel’s yell as a warning and ducked. A demon crashed into the ground behind him, and Sam whirled to stab it in the back before it could rise again.

“I believe that’s the last,” Castiel said. There was a spray of blood across his chin and part of his cheek, and his hands were gloved in blood. Sam’s stomach lurched. Yes, he’d heard Castiel say his powers were diminished, but to see him reduced to physically ripping demons apart was still a shock.

What couldn’t be helped had to be dealt with. “Thanks,” Sam said. “Got any ideas about how we get rid of a tanker truck full of poison gas?” Dean would’ve wanted to blow it up, he thought, and the realization made him start jogging back to the airshaft, the quickest way back given all the locks on the main door.

“I’ll take care of it,” Castiel called out, and Sam made a mental note to spend more time being grateful for their remaining friend.

As he slid down the ladder fireman-style, praying that Dean hadn’t done anything too stupid, he considered the implications of this assault. Crowley had definitely sent the second string. He was making a point: I’m coming for you.

****

Dean had only pointed the gun at Sam for five seconds, tops, and now Sam was all pissed at him even though Dean had consented to being disarmed, including the knife that Sam never would’ve guessed about. Blah blah ‘you have to stay safe’ blah. Like Dean would’ve gained anything from staying inside the Bunker if Sam was outside getting himself killed. Also, somebody had gotten to ice a bunch of demons and it wasn’t him, which got on his nerves.

Whatever. Dean also didn’t see why Sam wanted him back in the Devil’s Trap now that it was obvious how little it mattered to him. (Okay, symbolism was important, but Dean didn’t have to admit that, especially when the alternative allowed him to make himself a sandwich in his own damn kitchen. But then it turned out that Sam had, as Dean should’ve expected, allowed mold to become the dominant food group in the fridge, which meant that staying out was hardly worth it.)

“I’m gonna kill that bastard extra for this,” he commented to no one in particular. Sam had talked him back into the Devil’s Trap, but no way was he accepting chains again.

Sam ignored him. The sight of the books piled around Sam made Dean feel warm and almost comfortable. Of course Sam had to sit on the floor because the dungeon wasn’t built for research like the library was, but it was the spirit of the thing.

“We’ve got to give him something else to worry about,” Sam finally said, slamming a cover closed in frustration.

“Heaven won’t help us,” Cas reminded them from the darkness at the edge of the room, where he was hanging out now. Dean thought that as a human he would’ve been more concerned about how the angel was looking like he’d lost most of his feathers. But everybody died, or should die. All the caring he had left was scraped together for Sam, and even that was at least half Dean not wanting anyone else—Death included—to fuck with his stuff.

Back to their present annoyance. “Garth and his hunter friends are out,” Dean admitted, and Sam gave him a look that said that he was disappointed without even needing to ask. “Pretty much the only things left that’ll fight Crowley are the monsters.”

Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Wait a second. You told me you took out a bunch of the alphas. But not all, right?”

Dean nodded, already not liking where this was going.

“That’s our play, then. Find the remaining alphas, point out that Crowley’s coming for them next as soon as he gets his Knight back, and tell them we’re the only ones who can take Dean off the table.”

“Right, because alphas have been so trustworthy this far.” Dean wanted to reach through the Devil’s Trap and smack some sense into Sam. Also now that he was thinking about the alphas he very strongly wanted to kill a dozen or so. Based on previous experience, they’d almost be a challenge.

“We don’t need to trust them,” Sam said relentlessly. “We just need to point out where their self-interest lies.”

“No way,” Dean said. “You are not negotiating with a bunch of alphas with just an angel with his batteries low to protect you.” Cas didn’t seem offended by the accurate description, just folded his arms and watched the two of them.

“Then we’ll let you out, and you can go back in when we’re done,” Sam said, like that was reasonable. “If you promise you’ll keep them on, you can wear the sigils that keep Crowley from summoning you. Your presence will make our claims a lot more credible.”

“Now you think you can trust me?” Sure, Sam would let Dean out when it suited Sam, but let _Dean_ suggest a beer run and it was like Dean had asked to gut a puppy.

Sam looked at him. “For this, yeah, I do. You didn’t say yes to Michael. You let me fall into the Pit. You’ll come, and you’ll protect me, and then we’ll come back here and finish this.”

Sam had always had the faith, between them.

****

Finding the alphas proved both more difficult and easier than Sam expected. More difficult, because when they had a line on the alpha gremlin, Dean had to be dissuaded from killing his way into the gremlin’s presence, and Sam was pretty sure the struggle set Dean’s treatment back substantially. As it was, he slaughtered three of the monsters, and would’ve done more if Sam hadn’t wrapped his whole body around Dean’s and shook him back to a tenuous control.

Easier, because when Sam did get the alpha to listen, it agreed to reach out to the other alphas remaining. Not before suggesting that killing Dean would be simpler, and not before Dean got to posture about liking to see it try. But after a lot of inarticulate roaring—and speechifying on the gremlin’s side—they’d secured breathing room from Crowley. Castiel had even considered them safe enough to go pursue a lead on his own health, for which Sam was abstractly grateful.

“You know this is gonna bite us in the ass,” Dean grumbled as Sam opened the door to the Bunker.

Sam waved him further inside and started redrawing the sigils to keep him contained and unreachable. “What else is new,” he observed. “We didn’t make any promises.”

“’m just saying, with our luck they’re gonna get jazzed to be working together. It’s gonna be Axis and Allies, and we are way short on allies.”

Sam suppressed the smile that wanted to come from Dean’s use of ‘we.’ “Maybe. But if it didn’t happen when the Leviathans were here, odds are it isn’t going to.”

Dean’s pursed lips told Sam what he thought of that.

“Give me the anti-Crowley amulet and let’s get back to your treatment,” Sam said. There was a reason he hadn’t wanted Dean’s protection to be too portable; Dean had a tendency to wander.

Dean looked longingly at the kitchen. “Oh, come on. Not even time for a beer?”

Dean was so fucking charming, it was easy to forget what he was. “Dean,” he said, infusing it with all his conviction. Someone needed to be making the decisions here, and it wasn’t the demon.

“I’d kill for some shots and a blow job,” Dean grumbled, turning down the hallway towards the dungeon.

“Right now, you’d kill for a lot less than that. And there’ll be plenty of time to get your rocks off when you’re cured.”

“You offering, Sam? ‘Cause that’d be a better incentive than you’ve given me so far.”

Sam only kept moving because of years of training taking shocks. That wasn’t a thing they joked about, probably because so many other people did. At least, that’s what he always told himself. “Shut up and get in the Devil’s Trap,” he said, possibly his worst comeback ever.

“Fine,” Dean snapped, flashing black-eyes, as if that was any kind of rebuke.

And if Sam lingered a bit with his hand spread over Dean’s jaw and neck, tilting him into the right place for the injection, he was only reassuring himself that Dean was here, submitting, and not out wreaking havoc.

****

Dean understood that he was a moron for stepping right back into the Devil’s Trap and baring his neck for Sam’s needle. He’d had his skin peeled from his body with less pain. But Sam had said he trusted Dean to do what Sam asked, even after everything. Sam had even smiled at him. If being a demon was all about indulging your worst impulses, then it made sense that Dean couldn’t make himself give that up.

At least with Cas off in Heaven trying to get his grace healed Dean didn’t have to hold back on how bad it felt. Yeah, Cas had seen him at his worst already, but that didn’t mean Dean had any fondness for replays.

Sam checked the spell-hardened ropes—Dean had only allowed them because he was a little worried he was going to kill Sam purely by accident with his thrashing, and also because he got to make bondage jokes—and squatted so that they were eye to eye. “How are you feeling?”

“Peachy,” Dean said.

Sam frowned, the worry lines that Dean couldn’t help wanting to erase furrowing his gigantic brow. “We’re getting to the point where I think you’re going to have to _want_ to change back. I don’t think it will work without that.”

“That,” Dean told him, “was not part of the sales pitch.”

“Suck it up,” Sam counseled. “If you don’t want Crowley pulling your strings, then you need to cooperate.”

“Speaking of Crowley—”

“No trace; I think we’ve given him enough to worry about for now,” Sam said. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Sam—” Dean paused and gave some real thought to how he was going to say this. “I don’t want to be Crowley’s butt-boy. But being a demon, it’s not all bad. Even tied to this fucking chair, my back doesn’t hurt. I fell asleep last night and slept for six hours. I don’t need to see the bottom of a bottle before I can even think about my next move. I’m not still mad at you for things you did five years ago; I don’t care. I’m not saying it’s good. It’s just—hard to stop wanting.”

Sam sighed. His hair was lank—boy wasn’t spending enough time taking care of himself, and Dean would bet a thousand dollars that neither Sam nor Cas had put any new food in the refrigerator even after Dean’s extensive lecture on the subject—and his eyes were burning. “Believe me, I know all about how good that power can feel. But it’s not right. If you give in to Crowley, you won’t care about your car, or your burgers, or even your porn. You won’t care about anything but killing. You gotta want to come back, man.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Dean admitted.

“Dean,” Sam said, then paused because even his gigantic intellect was clearly having a hard time coming up with something hopeful. “You know, we’ve known three people to throw off demonic possession. Dad, Bobby, and me, because otherwise they’d have kept hurting you.” He reached out and grabbed Dean’s shoulder, and even in the middle of everything Dean was so happy that Sam’s grip was bruising. Sam’s health was like sunlight and the open road. “You gave us the strength to fight, to do what you need to do now, because we loved you, Dean.”

Dean laughed, choked-off in his throat, and looked over Sam’s shoulder so he didn’t have to meet his brother’s eyes. “That so, Sammy? Then I got some bad news for you.”

“Believe it or not,” Sam told him, “your low self-esteem is not a state secret. I guess you’re just going to have to do it for me, then.”

Sam left him alone, then, so Dean could chew on that in peace.

It was just—he didn’t get it. How could Sam want him saved, after all Dean had done? Not just done to Sam, even though that alone was enough. Yeah, of course Sam didn’t want him following Crowley’s orders, but that was just good tactics. Sam was talking like Dean had something to offer as a human, instead of as a weapon.

****

Just when Sam was about to crack and start breaking things, Castiel brought an angel to the Bunker’s entrance and requested that Sam let her in. “Shamshiel is a mender of broken things. She was able to retard my deterioration. And Dean still needs physical healing. If he becomes human like this, he’ll die just as quickly as he did before. I am no longer capable of interventions of this magnitude.”

Sam wasn’t thrilled, but he scratched an exception for Shamshiel and led her down to the dungeon. The angel didn’t seem any happier to be there than he was to have her. “Castiel,” she said before Sam opened the bespelled door. “Are you sure? He’s a demon, and not just any demon.”

“It’s in the service of redeeming him,” Castiel said, his eyes on her intense. He was watching her like she was a lion that might decide that it was lamb season at any moment. Sam was moderately concerned but willing to let this play out, since even if she was concealing an angel blade Dean would survive. Not that he wanted Dean to have _another_ hole in need of fixing. But the downside didn’t seem that great.

In a lot of ways, it was so much easier to go from crisis to crisis, not noticing how much damage was being covered up. Fighting evil was an addiction of its own, at least in Winchester hands. He really needed to do something about that, but not now.

The angry glances Shamshiel favored him with reminded him that he wasn’t much higher up on Heaven’s list when it came to smiteworthiness. While she bent over Dean and ignored his suggestive remarks, Sam grabbed Castiel’s elbow. “Thanks,” he said, to make sure he did say it before the next disaster. “I know you’re using all the pull you have. It can’t be easy.”

Castiel’s eyebrows rose. “It’s Dean.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. There were things he could’ve asked Castiel about that response, but they didn’t seem all that important at the moment.

Dean cursed, but in that showy way that meant he wasn’t really hurt. Sam turned towards him anyway.

“He is whole, insofar as a demon can be whole,” Shamshiel said. Her mouth was still twisted with disgust.

“Thank you,” Sam said, fervent to compensate for Dean’s sneer.

Castiel left the dungeon to see Shamshiel out. Sam didn’t know whether he was getting sucked back in to the politics of Heaven, and couldn’t afford to care at the moment. As long as Castiel remembered to reset the wards to keep her out in the future, that would be good enough.

“That was the last thing I was worried about before the final stages,” he told Dean. “I’m going to double your dose.”

Dean didn’t do nearly as well as he thought he did at covering up fear. Sam knew that being a demon wasn’t what Dean wanted; he loved his own guilt too much for that. Dean just didn’t want to give it his all and fail anyway. Sam got it, though honestly both of them ought to be used to that scenario by now.

Sam rolled up his sleeve—he looked more like a junkie than he ever had when he was drinking Ruby’s blood, more bruises on his arms than moles—wrapped the tubing around his forearm to make the vein pop, and drew a fresh syringe. Dean watched with fascinated dread, and gritted his teeth when Sam approached.

****

You’d think they shared enough blood that injections of Sam’s wouldn’t be painful. But he’d have chosen to be sanded with broken glass over this. How Crowley could’ve gotten addicted to this shit was a mystery Dean didn’t care to solve.

The jagged pain wasn’t the worst part. Sam’s blood had _feelings_ in it, threading through his veins and into all the awful parts of his brain that had only quieted down when he’d become the thing that he was now. Sam was asking him to return to carrying this ten-ton weight he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding before. Dad, Jo, Ellen, Bobby, Kevin—they were curiosities, stories told by someone else, and then as the blood and prayers hit him they were fresh and real and all his fault. Sam was scraping away the black armor and uncovering the wriggling grub underneath.

Cas—when had he returned?—murmured something; Dean was too busy trying not to bite off his own tongue to pay attention.

Sam’s thumb on his jaw was so gentle that Dean cringed. “I’m gonna do another dose right away, Dean. I think we’re close.”

“Fuck you, Sam!”

Sam snorted.

Dean could feel it coming, rushing like a train with no one on the brakes. He was going to be torn apart. His heels thrummed against the chair as he thrashed without coordination or hope at the chains. Of course he was breaking. That’s what he did. “This is punishment, right?” His face was wet, tears slipping down to wet his collar, little kisses of cold. He wanted to scream. He wanted to turn this place into dust. His lips curled back from his teeth. “You can blow me!”

Another wave of pain hit, and his back bowed. When he could breathe again he spoke without thinking. “Or let me go, I’ll do you, I’ll be better than that bitch Ruby ever was, you don’t even know, the things I could do for you.” Right then, it seemed like the best idea ever.

He could feel Sam’s hesitation. Not because he’d take the offer but because—well, they had issues.

“This will all be over soon,” Sam decided, and moved forward.

“No,” he moaned, but he knew Sam was done listening to demons. Coming so soon on top of the last injection, it was like being set on by a nest of razor-winged wasps. Random memories surged to the top of his consciousness and burst, like fireworks. Watching Sam fall in Cold Oak. Loading Sam’s shorts with itching powder and snickering madly as Sam squirmed. Watching Sam fall at Stull. Sitting on the Impala with a beer, Sam, and the sunset. Watching Sam watch him get vamped. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Sam against the Leviathans. Finding Kevin’s body. Watching Sam eat the meal Dean had made for them, in their very own kitchen.

“Come back to us, Dean,” Sam coaxed, not for the first time.

“I can’t,” Dean said, tears slipping down his face. He could feel his eyes switching back and forth, like a heart’s erratic beat.

“You can,” Sam insisted. “You’re almost there, Dean. Come back to me. Just fight it one more time.”

The only way to have Sam was to pick it all back up. And his rotten heart didn’t know how to want anything else.

Every muscle in his body clenched, ugly and snotty and snarling. He jerked against his restraints once, twice. The world fell on him, every weakness and failure and moment of rest avalanching down on him until he should’ve been scoured skeleton-clean.

He couldn’t see. Everything was blooms of light and darkness, noises shuffling—Sam cursing as he crashed into something. “Sam? Sammy?”

“’sokay,” Sam said, from somewhere below Dean’s ear level, which meant he’d hit the floor for some reason. But he didn’t sound like Sam bleeding sounded. Dean blinked and began to make out shapes. Sam was picking himself up, while Cas looked like he’d been bracing himself against a hurricane. Every random scrap of paper and chalk-end in the room was up against the walls, slowly sliding downwards.

“Christo,” Sam said, and Dean didn’t feel much of anything except the pain of the ropes rubbing against his wrists and ankles.

Cas’s blank angelic stare washed over him like a searchlight. “The demonic essence is dying away,” Cas confirmed. “Sam—”

Cas wasn’t the type to hesitate. Dean turned his head towards his brother and saw Sam pull his shoulders back. When Sam opened his mouth, what came out wasn’t the prayers he’d used before. It was Enochian. It was the spell to close Hell.

Dean howled his refusal. He tore into his own head, trying to find that endless black pit inside him, and clutch it tight to himself so that Sam couldn’t continue.

Sam continued.

Dean thrashed against the ropes that bound him, too great for his human strength. All the clarity, all the lust, was wisping away. Dying like smoke blown away by a windstorm. He was just Dean Winchester, a weak and trembling idiot, no better than Alastair had found him. “Sammy!” It came out garbled, through the tears, and it was too late.

Sam was on the floor, unmoving.

Somewhere, someone was promising that he was going to kill Cas for letting this happen. He was bargaining, begging. The lights in the room were dimming. The ocean roared in his ears. He let himself drown.

****

“Congratulations on not dying,” Castiel said, deadpan.

Sam answered that by rolling onto his side and horking pretty spectacularly, considering that he didn’t remember the last time he ate more than a protein bar at one sitting. Castiel neither came closer nor stepped back.

When he was sure he was done, he pushed himself away from the mess and managed to sit up. He was still in the dungeon, but Dean wasn’t.

“Dean is sleeping,” Castiel said immediately. It was a little creepy how the only human interactions Castiel seemed to understand centered around Dean.

“Did it work?” Sam struggled to his feet.

“He’s human,” Castiel confirmed, speaking now to Sam’s back because Sam was staggering to the door. “The Mark is still on his arm, however.”

Sam stopped in his tracks, but only for a moment. Okay. Okay, that could be dealt with next. On to the next problem: Castiel had agreed that there was simply no way to tell whether the Trials could be completed so far apart (and with Sam no longer dying) without making an attempt; he’d also expressed uncertainty about whether all the damage to Sam’s body would return if he finished the third. If the ritual did require him to sacrifice his life, he’d failed.

Without being asked, Castiel had come to support him, which was good because Sam’s left leg was dragging a little, and also there seemed to be about three too many corridors in front of him.

As they shuffled towards Dean’s room, Sam braced himself and asked. “What about the doors of Hell?”

Castiel gave him a look that said quite plainly: I’ve just been carrying Dean’s unconscious body to his bedroom and watching you to make sure you don’t aspirate on your own vomit, and since Heaven’s radio station is under new management, I really have no idea.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Would you mind making a call?”

“I live to serve the Winchesters,” he said. Sam thought that was slightly unfair, since this had been a joint project, but then again it meant that he let Sam go just in time for Sam to stumble into, then brace himself against, Dean’s door. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the surge of triumph.

Then he went to sit by his brother and wait for him to wake up.

****

He was warm. His back hurt the way it did when he slept on it instead of on his stomach. The lights were on. Sam was in the room.

Dean opened his eyes and rose, or tried to. He’d forgotten how fucked-up his body had been. That lady angel had fixed the stab wound in his gut, but left behind the twinge in his leg and the spike that hit his shoulder if he stayed in place too long. He made it onto his elbows, but now Sam knew he was awake. “Come here so I can punch you,” he croaked.

“Hell is boarded over,” Sam said. “Castiel says that all the demons aboveground when it happened are still here, and that includes Crowley, but they’re cut off. If we take them out, they’re done. I’m betting his self-preservation instinct will keep him far away from here, especially if the alphas stay on his ass. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Dean swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Sam had completed the Trials, and Sam wasn’t dead. So much for his big fucking hurry to get it done with last year. Dean was sort of responsible for drawing the Trials out long enough for Sam to recover in between, but really that hadn’t been his plan and the collateral damage was on him, so he wasn’t going to rub it in. “I guess you got most of what you wanted.”

Sam unfolded from his chair and plunked himself down next to Dean. “I don’t actually have a death wish, you know. Ready to die isn’t the same as wanting to.” Their shoulders brushed. Sam radiated warmth, like he’d done most of his life, instead of the sickly chill from the first Trials. Dean couldn’t resist closing his eyes and leaning into the pressure of Sam’s presence.

“I meant what I said,” Sam told him. “You gotta let me make my own decisions, here on out.”

Dean let himself hope, just for a second, that ‘here on out’ was going to involve Sam being perfectly safe, sitting in the Bunker cataloging rare books. Shit, together they’d taken such big bites out of the supernatural most wanted list that even hunting was going to get marginally safer. But he knew them: they’d find some way to get neck deep again, whether it was angel wars or something completely new, like the Jefferson Starships had been.

“I know,” he said, finally. “Just—you can’t ask me not to follow you. I won’t do it again. You go, I go.” Selfish, of course. His stomach cramped. He managed to hide the wince, mostly because Sam was staring at his own hands.

“Yeah,” Sam said, surprising him out of the pain. Before he could say anything, Sam reached over and laced their fingers together, like they were fifth-grade sweethearts. “I’m not saying I like it. But that’s not my call.” The heaviness in his words was unmistakable: he was demanding the same of Dean. If Sam wanted to throw his life away, Dean had to let him.

“Okay,” he said, barely breathing it out. It was so hard not to squeeze Sam’s hand until the bones ground together. Keeping him close by hurting him. But that had to stop. He was alive and human again right now, and he was going to let Sam be Sam. “You know, you’re the best of all of us,” he said, his thumb rubbing over the back of Sam’s hand. Just enjoying the feel of Sam being there.

Sam made a choked sound, denying, but didn’t say anything Dean would have to refute. When it became clear that Dean wasn’t going to let go of his hand first, he cleared his throat. “Traditionally we hug now.”

“Aw, you ruined the moment,” Dean said, but he rose to his feet and opened his arms. With his face buried in Sam’s shoulder, he didn’t have to think about the meaning of the itch already crawling over his skin.

“Okay,” Sam said, breathing a little fast, when they pulled back. “You’re not a demon, and most of the rest are locked up. I say we celebrate. I’ll run to the store if you’ll make the burgers.”

“Win-win,” Dean said, and smiled. Sam deserved to enjoy his victory.

On his arm, the Mark burned, worse the second time around, erasing the hope that he’d stupidly allowed Sam to inspire in him.

****

Sam needed to consult with Dean to find out if a bit of medieval Cain lore had any connection to his experiences with the Mark. Dean wasn’t in the kitchen, and of course he wasn’t in the library; he wasn’t in the garage and he wasn’t in the dungeon. At last, Sam checked Dean’s bedroom. He’d left it for last because of all the places in the Bunker it reminded him most of their divide—not that he wanted to share a room again, but Dean having his own space had a new and unwelcome meaning for him now.

Dean wasn’t in his bedroom.

He was in his bathroom instead. Sam heard faint distressed sounds, not like Dean jerking off, and on instinct he flung open the door rather than knocking.

When Dean turned his head from the toilet, Sam saw blood all over his mouth. Sam stepped onto the tile, almost next to Dean. There were little red strings seeping up from the bottom of the toilet to the surface of the water. Sam couldn’t tell how much of what Dean had spewed up was food and how much parts of Dean. “Dean!”

Dean’s expression said he’d known this was coming, and that he thought the problem was that he was letting Sam down. “Turns out the human body can’t stand the Mark,” he said. He forced himself to his feet and turned to the sink, splashing water on his face. Now the blood was on his hands, too.

No. Dean did not get to do this to him. “You were fine before!”

Dean swiveled to face Sam head-on. “No, you were so pissed you didn’t see before. As long as I was killing, that helped some. But I needed to kill _a lot_ , not some once-a-week thing. If it hadn’t’ve been Metatron, it’d’ve happened anyway.”

Sam ran his hands through his hair so he wouldn’t start punching and kicking. “So, what, you’re dying again? You’re going to die and turn back into a demon and this will start all over again?” Sam knew he was yelling. He didn’t care. Dean had done this, and somehow he’d found a way to make it worse, and even though he hadn’t meant to do it intent had never been their problem.

Dean shrugged. “I kinda hoped one time would be enough. Thought maybe the Mark would go with the cure.” His face in the mirror was just as self-deprecatingly ashamed, like a puppy who’d made a mess. Pretending that there was anything small about this.

“The gate to Hell is closed,” Sam thought out loud. “Shouldn’t that make a difference?”

Dean busied himself flushing the toilet and washing his hands. “This ain’t possession, Sammy. Don’t need a demon out of Hell when it was already inside me.”

****

Dean got why Sam was furious with him. Like all Winchester plans, this one hadn’t quite gotten the job done, because Dean had gone and taken the Mark without reading the manual first. And Dean hadn’t thought far enough beyond being cured to wonder how far into humanity it would take him.

At least this time he knew where he was headed. And if Sam would sit down for a minute and listen, maybe they’d get to say goodbye for real.

Of course, that depended on Dean being able to keep his cool through a whole conversation. The bloodlust thing wasn’t exactly making that easy. He’d forgotten, as a demon, just how uncontrolled being a human was. At random intervals, the need to make something bleed would seize him entirely, stopping him in his tracks, and he had to crawl to some dark corner while he shook it out. It was like being turned into ice and vaporized, all at once; it was like having his hands in his own guts and twisting. He knew that picking up the Blade and going hunting would make things easier, at least for a while. But he also knew where that led now, so instead he banged his head against a wall until the spasm passed. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Cas or Sam found him one of those times.

Sam was tearing through the library again, looking for Cain-related stuff he might’ve missed when they were trying to handle Abbadon and Metatron at the same time. It was easier to be with Cas, who didn’t look at him like Dean was strangling an adorable dog he’d hand-raised after rescuing from drowning.

“So,” he said, plunking himself down next to Cas, who’d decided that the stairs down from the Bunker entrance were a good place to sit. “How’re you doing?” The details were fuzzy, but he thought that Cas might be in trouble of his own. The angel always got that pinched look when he was hiding something from them—or maybe it was that he looked relaxed on the very rare occasions he wasn’t.

Cas contemplated his bottle—it was fucking ginger ale, of course it was—dangling from his fingers. “My grace is fading,” he said. “Technically it’s not my grace. It’s not a proper fit, and the temporary treatments I’ve received from Shamshiel are no longer effective.”

Dean nodded like he understood. Cas had the wrong engine inside; that was a recipe for breakdown. “When it goes, you’ll be human.” It wasn’t a guess; he’d seen the future Cas. That future was now in the past, he realized: angelic time travel was mindfuckery and a half.

“If the detaching grace doesn’t kill me first,” Cas agreed. Dean examined him more closely. He always looked about a pint of blood and forty hours of sleep down, but now his hands shook minutely, and his hair wasn’t just rumpled but greasy.

“What can we do?” he asked. “You want me to grab you another angel?” Hell, he might’ve done that for Cas even without the Mark making it sound like fun.

Cas turned his head with that birdlike swiftness, evidently trying to figure out just how serious Dean was. “Don’t,” he said, with finality. “If there is a solution, it’s not that, and it’s not here. But perhaps it’s my time. I’ve been … through many states in the past few years, enough to make the millennia beforehand seem insignificant. I’m not even sure I want to be an angel any more. I’ve seen too much of what we’ve become, without God to direct us.”

Dean sure as shit knew what it was like to want it all to be over. He was selfish enough to want Cas to stick around, but—Sam wasn’t wrong about Dean making those decisions for someone else, no matter how much Dean didn’t want to be left behind. He could give Cas the permission he’d never given Sammy. “Okay. But you let me know the _second_ you get an idea. Don’t ever think we don’t want you around any way we can have you. Human, angel, whatever.”

They sat in silence for a minute. “Thank you, Dean,” Cas said, heavy and quiet.

Dean cleared his throat and sniffed away the heaviness in his sinuses. “Uh, in case I don’t get the chance again—thanks for helping Sam with all this. He—I know he’s all grown up and everything, but he still needs someone watching his back. If it couldn’t be me, I’m real glad it was you.”

Cas considered that. “When we met, I saw you only as the righteous man, and Sam as a curiosity—an abomination struggling mightily to do good. I regret many things that have happened since, but I don’t regret learning that it wasn’t as simple as Heaven told us. I don’t regret standing with you.”

Dean rubbed at the dust in his eye. “Yeah. Me too.” And if Cas understood what Dean was really trying to say, he didn’t call Dean on it.

****

Sam had been forwarding any potential hunts he came across to Garth, even after Garth stopped replying. He’d been too much of a coward to ask Dean for the details that had led Garth to avoid Winchester contact, but he had a good guess at the general outline. Dean was going to have to grovel when he was human again. Or, more realistically, Dean would mumble and not meet Garth’s eyes and Garth would forgive him anyway, because people let Dean get away with murder, and that wasn’t a metaphor.

But Garth couldn’t handle everything, and right after Sam had sent another message about another angry ghost he came across a story that was almost happening next door. Along the Niobrara River in Nebraska, the picked-over corpses of bison and elk had been appearing for several weeks, which freaked out Fish & Wildlife but didn’t get much attention. It was when hikers started to vanish that other people started to notice. A little hacking revealed that there’d been a witness to one of the disappearances, now being held for psychiatric observation. After all, whatever the survivor had seen, it couldn’t have possibly been a giant man-bat scooping up his brother in its talons.

When Sam told Dean about it, Dean perked right up. “Batman, Sammy,” he said, then made na-na-na-na noises until Sam threw his hands up and stalked out.

If Sam went on this hunt alone, Dean would break out; he’d already proven as much. It was a four-hour drive from the Bunker. Taking Dean along was marginally less dangerous than leaving him, Sam concluded.

Dean’s glee when Sam gave him his anti-Crowley charms back wasn’t at all reassuring. Sam also hadn’t factored in the annoyance of Dean’s infinite supply of man-bat and bat-man jokes.

There would be no pretending to be feds on this trip. The very least troubling thing Dean was likely to do was Hulk out on a local cop, and Hell only knew what he’d do to a witness.

Fortunately the doctor’s notes from the survivor were quite detailed, once Sam hacked the hospital records. He described a larger-than-human attacker, with a bat’s smushed-in face, gray skin and huge wings, along with powerful mammalian arms and legs. He’d fired his hunting rifle point-blank into its back when it was getting away with his brother, to no effect other than black powder marks. The doctor interpreted the claw marks on the survivor’s arm as self-inflicted wounds supporting the delusional narrative, but to Sam they looked to be about the right size for the kind of monster he’d seen.

Based on the description, Sam was guessing gargoyle. They weren’t common in the US, which was a good thing since their skin was apparently like stone and they outmassed the average grizzly bear. Also, and in blatant defiance of the laws of physics, they could fly.

Dean was just excited to go out into the woods. And to use the explosive rounds Sam loaded up on, as if Sam was going to put a firearm in Dean’s hands.

They drove out near to where the latest attack had occurred. If Dean had been in his right mind, he never would have entrusted the car to the open lots run by the National Park Service, but he busied himself smirking and complaining about the length of the hike to the river. Sam gritted his teeth and let the weight of his pack distract him.

When they reached the river, it was bounded on both sides by fences, and the occasional ‘no trespassing’ sign, some with cutesy variations about how eager the owner was to use his shotgun.

Dean gestured at one of the signs. “Isn’t this public land?”

“No, just the river,” Sam told him. “Most of the land on either side is privately owned.”

“Fuckers,” Dean mused. “Ain’t that just like people, chopping up the world and keeping it for themselves. I swear, half the time you can’t tell the demons from the humans without an exorcism.”

The river looked like a miniature ocean, standing waves rising and curling over on themselves. It was beautiful, and they’d never seen anything like it before even after decades criss-crossing the country. Humans had preserved and could see the beauty in this river. Dean couldn’t get why that mattered now. But he would. Sam was going to make sure of that.

“Gargoyles,” Dean said to himself, clearly relishing the thought of something new to kill. “Next you’re gonna tell me the Last Unicorn is really out there.”

“I’m a little afraid of what you’d do to it,” Sam told him.

Dean flipped him off and they continued down the riverbank.

****

Walk long enough and you’ll find something that wants to kill you. If you’re a Winchester, anyway. Dean sensed them before he saw them—the Mark was very eager to find new things to kill—and grabbed Sam’s shoulder, shoving them both up against a rock outcropping to protect their backs.

The gargoyles’ wings were huge, which was a bonus because it meant that only two could converge on them at once. The lead two landed simultaneously, with a rustling-wing sound that almost made Dean look around to see if Cas had arrived.

“He said to kill the bigger one,” the slightly less ugly gargoyle said, “but you both look tiny to me.” Its voice was like rocks grinding against each other.

Crowley must’ve turned the gargoyles, promised them something if they went against the other monsters. That little fucker could sell dead man’s blood to vampires.

“Whatever Crowley promised you, there’s no way he’ll deliver,” Sam said, completely sincere as he braced himself and readied his shotgun.

“Our lawyers say different.”

Gargoyles had freaking _lawyers_? Even Sam squinched up his face in amazement at that. “There’s one thing I bet he didn’t tell you,” Dean said.

“Yeah?” the gargoyle said, chest puffed up. Dean knew he was a hypocrite about the macho posturing, but honestly it was kind of ridiculous on guys who weren’t him.

“Yeah,” Dean said, and called the Blade to himself. Then he lost track for a while. Black blood; the sound of Sam’s shotgun, the grenade rounds exploding and peppering him with stony bits of gargoyle; getting hit on the shoulder with what felt like a ton of solid granite; the Blade, soaking it all up and asking for more; claws on his back and thigh; the gargle they made as they died, better than a girl groaning the fake name he’d given her while she came.

Sam’s yell brought him back into real time—Sam’s voice disappearing into the sky, yanked by one of the flying bastards. Dean leapt over three crumpled bodies and grabbed one whose only injury was a spurting wound in the leg. It cringed as he mounted it and put the Blade to its throat. “Get me up there if you want to live,” he suggested.

The gargoyle beat its wings against the ground a few times and they rose. Turned out, Dean hated flying even worse without anything between him and the air but a few feet of monster. Felt like his head was going in a different direction from the rest of him, a dizzy, stretched-rubber feeling. He could hear Sam giving his captor a hard time, tangling in its arms so it couldn’t drop him yet.

“Up,” he ordered. “Get me over it.” His ride, breathing so hard he half expected it to faint, groaned and flapped harder. The air whooshed by, until every part of Dean’s exposed skin felt like ice, and the gargoyle’s body shuddered like it was about to come apart like balsa wood, but they climbed further.

The other one was busy trying to peel Sam off, not trying to gain height.

“Please,” his gargoyle whined. He looked down: they were probably twelve feet above Sam, who was at least seventy feet over the ground.

“Yeah,” he said, and slit the gargoyle’s throat. Promises to monsters didn’t count.

Shoving it away as it fell, he twisted in the air. The Blade’s hunger might’ve helped, because he landed just right to drag the edge down the side of Sam’s gargoyle’s neck, slicing vertically until the Blade caught for a second on the gargoyle’s collarbone.

The gargoyle’s wings stilled and started to fold. Dean’s stomach dropped, along with the rest of him.

“Grab onto the wings—pull them out!” Sam yelled from below him.

Dean let the Blade take care of itself and obeyed, wrenching the big muscles that connected the gargoyle’s wings to its back up until the wings were nearly extended, floppy in death but still catching the air some. They were moving way too fast, but not dropping like a stone, gliding towards whatever was underneath them.

Which turned out to be a bunch of trees. When they hit the first one, the glide ended and they all went tumbling ass over elbows in a ball of Sam, Dean, and dead bleeding gargoyle, collecting leaves and sticks as they went. Dean’s back struck a branch that would’ve been big enough to sit on, but instead it broke under their combined weight and they kept falling, slowed by every collision.

The sudden silence when they reached the ground made Dean wonder whether he’d gone deaf.

“… ow,” Sam said from beneath him, with the corpse in between.

Dean rolled off, groaning, and shoved the gargoyle off of his brother.

He dropped to his knees. “Sam?” He poked at Sam’s ribs and got the you-asshole groan instead of the yes-they’re-cracked groan, and Sam didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere that required stitches. Dean himself felt like the tree bark had taken off half his face, but nothing seemed to be flapping loose, so he held his hand out to help Sam to his feet.

Sam was panting like he’d just—well, just killed a bunch of monsters and fallen out of the sky. “Next time,” Sam suggested, “maybe wait until we’re on the ground before you kill the monster holding us up.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Dean shot back, but his heart wasn’t in it. Flying pieces of shit. He’d known how stupid that second in-air kill was, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. There was a joke Bobby used to tell about a scorpion who hitched a ride on a turtle; it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done to people he loved too. He was sliding back into the Pit, and Sam couldn’t stop it. And Crowley was ready to take them as soon as they were weak.

****

In the end, there wasn’t any information about Cain Sam hadn’t already found. There was only Cain.

Dean coughed up the location with a minimum of fuss. The fuss occurred when Sam proposed to go alone. Dean put the Blade halfway through a wall in the ensuing discussion. In Sam’s mind, that was an argument against letting Dean come along. But, do unto others, or at least do unto Dean; he wasn’t going to lock Dean up to stop him while Dean was still nominally human. Not to mention that he doubted that they could hold Dean without Dean’s at least passive consent.

The bucolic setting probably would’ve been a mindfuck if Sam hadn’t already been used to horrors lurking in every golden field and purple mountain majesty. As it was, he drove up the gravel path to Cain’s house feeling a twitch in his shoulderblades, expecting an attack at any moment.

Dean stood on the porch next to Sam like a truant being dragged to detention, conscious that he’d made this mess and too ashamed to admit it. Cain must’ve known about their approach, but he waited until Sam knocked on his door to answer.

“My name is Sam Winchester,” Sam said, not letting Cain begin. “And we’re here to ask you to take the Mark from my brother.”

Cain stared at him for a moment, then gestured them inside. Sam had to sidle around him to enter. He was a big man, but not as big as Sam. He had a sense of calm around him, a vibe that would dull Sam’s edge if he let it. Dean followed Sam. When Sam looked back he could see Dean’s hands trembling.

“So, Sam and Dean Winchester,” Cain said, leading them further inside, towards the kitchen, “why would I take my favor back?”

As a general rule, Dean was good with kids and people directly in the middle of supernatural shit; Sam was good with witnesses and, occasionally, monsters. They’d decided that Cain counted as the latter, so Sam had rehearsed his pitch throughout the long drive. In the end there were only a few things to say, here in this cheerful, outdated little kitchen with the sunshine coming through the curtains and the clock ticking heedlessly on the wall. “Because it’s making him something he doesn’t want to be.”

Cain merely looked at him, waiting for more. “Please,” Sam said. “Please.” He had nothing to bargain with.

Cain sat down in a too-small wooden chair. Sam recognized the dominance move and stayed put. Cain scratched at his beard, looking at the fruit bowl on his kitchen table instead of at Sam. “You love him still,” Cain said at last. “After all he’s done to you?” Beside him, Dean winced.

Maybe Cain had followed demon gossip and knew exactly what he was asking. Or maybe Cain was asking on his own behalf. That was all right. Sam could give him what he wanted. “You don’t have to stop loving someone when they hurt you.” He felt Dean shift, uneasy, not ready to believe.

Cain met his eyes. It wasn’t anything like looking into the mirrored slick of an ordinary demon. Cain had lived thousands of years in pain and rage, and then possibly thousands more clamping down on the desire to hurt. It was like being face to face with Niagara Falls, or with a tornado. But a man who’d renounced the Knights of Hell had to have some scraps of compassion left.

 

Track 1: [success](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307626/chapters/5077565)

Track 2: [failure](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307626/chapters/5077577)


	2. Track 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Success.

“And Dean,” Cain said. “You can’t speak for yourself?”

“Sammy’s the smart one,” Dean said, his lips twitching in something that didn’t know if it wanted to be a smile or a snarl. “Practically a lawyer. I’m liable to insult you, which isn’t the vibe we’re going for.” He kept his neck bent. His shoulders were tensed like rocks. Even now, so scared that Cain would deny him, he wanted to challenge Cain. See whether it was the new blood or the wise old man who would come out on top.

“You’re turning down all the power in the world. Give it some time and you could be the King of Hell.”

Dean wondered just how crazy a thousand years of mourning had made this guy. “Who the fuck wants the paperwork? I’m not the kingly type.”

Cain tilted his head, like he was seeing something he hadn’t before. “The current King of Hell won’t be happy if his favorite new toy gets broken.”

Dean shrugged. “He can bill me.” 

“You won’t be able to protect your brother. And if you think that worm is going to let you live after you slip through his fingers—”

Dean nodded, the way he would’ve agreed with Dad diagnosing one of his fuck-ups. He knew there was a good chance they’d both die ugly if he unilaterally disarmed. “I wish, I wish so bad I could just … keep Sam and Cas and everyone safe. But that’s not how this works. Look at you—you got it under control, but you’re out in the middle of nowhere. That’s not in me to do. I was wrong. I’m not the right guy for the Blade.”

“You mean you’re too weak,” Cain said. 

“Maybe,” Dean told him. Most days he agreed, but it didn’t matter. Strong bones broke too, hit right. “But I’m not you. I gotta fight like me. And that means I gotta be human.” 

Cain didn’t look impressed. Dean was losing him. For Sam, he had to believe that a do-over was possible. If death could be taken back, why not this? Dean took a deep breath and put it all out there. “Look, Crowley ain’t the let-the-world-burn type, not like Abbadon or Metatron. So we’ll figure it out or we’ll die. I just—my brother wants out. I owe him that, and so much more. But he’s never gonna get there if I’m still a nuclear bomb. So I’m asking, I’m begging you: take it back.”

Cain rose from the table, turning away. He went to the old-fashioned refrigerator and began to pull out ingredients—eggs, milk, butter.

“Uh,” Dean said, bewildered and halfway to angry at the dismissal. He didn’t even mean to reach for the Blade. It was in his hand, so hungry, loosening his muscles and heating his blood at the anticipation of a fight. Sam’s hand shot out and gripped his forearm hard, shutting him up.

“After I take off the Mark,” Cain said, and maybe his eyes twinkled a bit as Sam sagged back against the counter in relief and Dean staggered a little himself, “I insist that you stay for breakfast. Fresh honey on pancakes—there’s nothing better.”

****

Sam didn’t hear what Dean said in his message to Castiel, but it was said softly and haltingly into the phone, which meant that he wasn’t being a flippant asshole. Sam leaned against the car while he waited for Dean to finish, soaking up the warmth from the metal. The day was bright and the fields outside of Cain’s house seemed to go on forever. 

Dean hesitated in front of the driver’s side door, his fingers frozen on the handle. 

“What’s wrong?”

Dean looked quickly at him, then away. “Nothing. You ready?”

Sam nodded, and they opened and slammed their doors in unison, the firm thunk a reminder of all they’d shared in the car. Dean reached for his sunglasses, then left them on the seat between them, squinting into the sun as they wheeled out.

The silence billowed between them like sulfurous clouds. It wasn’t right and Sam couldn’t figure out why. The mood should be celebratory, comfortable.

“Where do you want to go?” Dean asked, after the tension ratcheted up so high that Sam was ready to scream. “I can swing by the Bunker if there’s stuff you want.”

Oh. Sam thunked his neck back against the headrest. “I haven’t made any decisions,” he said. _That depends on you_ went unsaid.

Dean sucked his lower lip between his teeth. “Here’s the thing,” he said at last. “If you think stopping the Trials by talkin’ you out of killing yourself was wrong, then there’s nowhere for us to go. I’d do it again.” He paused. “Gadreel—I thought that was right. You weren’t exactly in shape to consult.”

Sam slumped back into his seat. He didn’t have the energy to try to explain, again.

“But,” Dean said, like the word was being dragged out of him on hooks, “you got such a raw deal, ever since the beginning with Azazel feeding you his blood, and I didn’t—I get why you hate me. I thought if you said yes to Ezekiel, it was okay, but it wasn’t. I knew how angels get their yeses and I did it anyway.” His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and he was staring ahead like there were razors preventing him from turning even a fraction. “If it happened again, I—I’d let you go. Then I’d eat my own gun.”

Sam couldn’t help himself. “So, you’re essentially blackmailing me to keep me alive.” It was one thing for Dean to follow him into mortal danger; that was the life, or should’ve been if Dean would have let him die. It was another level of fucked-up to promise suicide if Sam died.

Dean shrugged, faking nonchalance. “I told you before. You found your line, I found mine. You choose, I choose.”

The highway signs flashed by. Dean was pushing the Impala to its limits, hurrying them towards whatever future Sam gave them.

He’d been so angry for so long. Mostly, he was tired of it. He wanted his brother back. And, weirdly, he thought he could believe Dean this time. Dean’s contingency plan wouldn’t leave Dean alone, and Sam was willing to trust a promise like that.

He put his hand on Dean’s forearm, where the Mark had been. Dean shuddered, and the car shook with him as Dean eased off the gas. “You have to stop doing stupid shit unilaterally. From now on, our stupid decisions have to be together or not at all.”

“Sam—”

“We can’t be what we were,” Sam continued, ignoring Dean’s heartstruck grimace. “But what we were was broken. We can start again.”

****

Dean didn’t know what he was supposed to do now. Sam said he wanted to start again. Did that mean he was going to head back to school, expect Dean to pick up another construction gig, and get some _Odd Couple_ apartment? 

But Sam didn’t make any move to pack up his stuff, little as it was. He seemed content to catalog the weirder shit the Men of Letters had left behind, entering it into a database Charlie had set up for him before she Ozzed out, and to eat the food Dean cooked for him.

Dean didn’t do walking on eggshells well. It was a relief when the next set of monsters showed up just outside of Wichita. Sam’s email alert system popped up a bunch of cellphone videos with brown blurs snatching steaks off of grills and dogs off of leashes. When a baby disappeared from a porch, they knew it was time to roll.

Sam found where the things were holed up by some boring method Dean didn’t care about, and they broke into the abandoned McMansion, just like old times.

By the time they hit the great room (Dean would never admit he knew the name to Sam, but sue him, Lisa’s friends had talked a lot about real estate) there were thumps coming up the basement stairs, and they froze as five—no, six—things poured into the room and stopped. They didn’t attack, and Dean didn’t shoot just yet, unsure how many more there might be.

“What the fuck are these?” Dean asked, seriously curious. That was a shitload of hair, even by comparison to Sam. Even, frankly, by comparison to Cousin Itt. How did they not trip over it walking?

“We’re boggarts,” the one in the lead said, looking as offended as a talking horse-shaped lump of hair with beady black eyes could look. Dean thought it was tilting its nose up and sniffing. “And no, _Harry Potter_ got it all wrong.”

“Right,” Sam said, in his humor-the-monsters voice, unfazed by the fact that a freaking animal-shaped thing was talking to them. “I guess our question is, what are you doing here?”

“Moving in,” the boggart said. “You’re the Winchester brothers, right? You did us a solid, cutting off the demons like that. So walk away. We’re not greedy, but we’re at the top of the food chain now.”

“No, you aren’t,” Dean said, and shot it right between its shiny little eyes.

The room erupted; Dean emptied his magazine into the next one lunging at him and grabbed for the machete hanging at his hip as he tucked into a roll that took him past the two boggarts converging on him. Claws raked a line of fire across his arm, but it was nothing incapacitating. Gunfire behind him indicated that Sam hadn’t yet run out of ammo.

He came to his feet in front of one that looked more like a tiny giraffe made out of hair and teeth than anything else. Dean lunged forward and chopped off its head, which fell away from the body and thudded onto the carpet before the boggart’s knees got the message and collapsed. Damn if that didn’t still feel satisfying even without the Mark. 

“Stop!” Sam yelled, and Dean spun to see Sam shoving his gun back into his waistband, like the peace-loving freak that he was. Fortunately, the remaining two boggarts were cringing back against the wall, so Dean didn’t have to take immediate action to save his Gandhi ass.

“Here’s how it’ll be,” Sam said calmly, as if the floor weren’t already splattered with monster guts. “No food chain. But we have no interest in destroying anyone or anything who’s leaving humans alone. Leave the civilians alone. If you want us, come at us.” His knife appeared in his hand. Even Dean hadn’t noticed the movement, and he’d taught the kid. “Before you do, make a list of our kills, and make absolutely sure you’re better than every one of them.”

Silence. Dean tried to get a read on the boggarts, but he wasn’t exactly an expert in boggart body language. In a moment Sam was going to break and give them a friendly smile, trying to deal with the awkwardness of the moment. Dean cleared his throat. “Might wanna leave now,” he suggested, triggering the surviving boggarts’ hasty exit and preserving Sam’s badassery.

****

“We’re going to have to keep running cleanup like that,” Sam mused as they drove through the night towards the Bunker. 

“And someday we’ll be out of the game, and those assholes will be back Meryl Streeping someone else’s baby,” Dean agreed. 

That was a depressing but accurate thought. Not that Sam wasn’t grateful that they were back to the ordinary ghostbusting that had been so bizarre and odious to him as a kid, but this was like being Sisyphus, only with more vampires.

Maybe it didn’t have to be. They’d been coasting, taking a breather after surviving the latest round of atrocities. But they didn’t have to stay stuck.

“Soldiers and firefighters and cops have dangerous jobs, and they still have families and lives,” he said, testing out the thought. “They can do that because there’s an organization behind them, because they help each other out.”

“And because people _know_ what they do,” Dean protested, sensing where he was going. “Some djinn starts stalking you, you can’t call the FBI for help.”

“The Men of Letters were equipped to handle that,” Sam said, talking faster as the idea grew. “Yeah, they weren’t equipped to handle Abbadon, but she’s gone, Dean. The demons are gone. What’s left—a secret society, working together, could absolutely take out a bunch of djinns. Even the Campbells managed that. The archives prove it—the Men of Letters were powerful. We’ve got their records and their bank accounts. We should use them.”

Dean didn’t say more, which was because he knew Sam could out-argue him, but his face remained set with disapproval until they arrived back at the Bunker.

Sam followed his brother into the kitchen as Dean methodically began setting out pancetta, tomatoes, onions, and peppers and setting water to boil for a very late dinner. “Look,” Sam continued as if there hadn’t been three hours between their last words, “you love this place.” Dean’s shoulders hitched, and then he picked up a knife. “People built this together, Dean. It’s not meant for just the two of us.”

Dean chopped in silence for a few more minutes. Not turning away from the vegetables or pausing in his preparations, he asked, “So, what? You call up Garth and tell him we’re recruiting? That’ll go well.”

“Yes,” Sam agreed, “Garth will want evidence of good faith. But we’ve got it, and there are other hunters. We can create something here.” You’re a natural leader and teacher, he didn’t say, because Dean would fight him on that. But from prisons to movie sets to Purgatory, Dean was a social animal. And Sam wanted all their sacrifices to make the world a better place, not just save it from annihilation.

Dean wouldn’t meet his eyes through dinner. Half a dozen times Sam saw him formulate some objection, open his mouth, and stop, already working out the answer for himself. Hope fluttered in Sam’s chest; they couldn’t leave the life, but they could make the life more than an unending stream of suffering and isolation. Once Dean was on board, even dubiously, Dean would make it happen.

They ate, cleaned up, and retreated to their rooms. Dean hadn’t said no, not outright. Sam could wait him out.

He’d ninety percent expected the knock, which came just after three a.m. Scratching at his belly over his sleep pants, he opened the door and waved Dean in.

“What happens when I have to choose, Sam? Them or you, what happens to them?” Dean sounded wrecked, like it had already happened. And of course it already had.

Sam took Dean by the arm and guided him so that they were sitting side by side on Sam’s bed. “That’s where our deal comes in. There are risks I’m willing to take, and you have to let me take them.” There was even some chance that, worst came to worst, Dean would decide to stick around to protect his students if there were any when Sam died. Sam couldn’t deny that the thought of giving Dean an incentive to outlive him was part of the attraction of his plan.

“This is what you want,” he told Dean. “A home, and a purpose, and the two of us working together.”

“Yeah, there’s just this one little catch,” Dean said, jagged.

“Letting me make my own decisions isn’t a catch, Dean.”

Dean’s fingers clenched on the bedcovers. His chin dipped towards his chest as he rocked back and forth. Sam put his hand on Dean’s back, feeling the warmth and the strength of him through his black T-shirt. Dean breathed in deeply, only the faintest hint of a hitch. “No stupid sacrifices,” he said, and the anger in his tone didn’t disguise that he was giving in. 

“No stupid sacrifices,” Sam agreed; he wasn’t going to get into a debate over the meaning of stupidity just now. Dean leaned into his arm, raw animal comfort, and the world was unfolding in front of them in all its darkness and wonder. A new start, but honoring and building on the past instead of running from it.

Sam wasn’t going to run again.

“Dean,” he said, and moved his hand to Dean’s jaw, turning Dean’s face towards him.

“Sammy, what—” Dean stammered, his pupils dilating in a way that showed he knew very well what.

“I want to try something,” Sam told him, library-quiet, and Dean shuddered all over and closed his eyes.

What they were before was broken. Hell was all sealed up, and he already knew who was in his Heaven. Dean’s mouth underneath his was dry and soft, a little cool. Sam licked across his lips, and Dean opened up, leaning backwards and taking Sam with him until they crashed down on the mattress.

Dean was incapable of shutting up; he moaned into Sam’s mouth even as his hips pulsed up against Sam’s. His hands slipped over Sam’s back with skill learned on a thousand strangers, pressing his palms against Sam’s shoulders as if he wasn’t quite sure whether this was only a mirage. Sam felt too large for his own skin. Dean’s T-shirt was abrasive against his bare skin and he pushed it up, tangling around Dean’s armpits. Dean’s skin was fever-hot. His dick was hardening against Sam’s, a thick pressure through layers of cotton.

Sam was already sweating, desperate to lose his sweatpants, and as if Dean read his mind Dean’s strong hands were tugging at the waistband, helping Sam wriggle out of them without losing his place on top of Dean. Sam braced his hands on Dean’s pecs and levered himself up, breaking their kiss so he could look at Dean. Predictably, Dean colored and turned his head, even though Sam was the one who was naked. Sam leaned down and licked the exposed stretch of Dean’s neck, sweat-bitter, and Dean yelped, turning his head so fast that their noses nearly collided.

Sam chuckled into his ear and brought his hands to Dean’s biceps, squeezing the solid flesh. Dean moaned, quiet and hungry. Sam had to kiss him again.

Dean wriggled his hand between them, and then there was the hot shock of flesh as he pulled their cocks together, captured in his hand. His knuckles dragged against Sam’s stomach as he began to jerk them; he couldn’t get his hand all the way around them both. It was thrilling and frustrating—Dean in a nutshell—and Dean couldn’t do it on his own. Sam shifted his weight and freed his own hand to help out, pressing their sensitive heads together with his fingers and enjoying how they both gasped in unison, like the clunk of the car doors closing as they both got in.

If they were going out together, Sam thought, it might as well be in a real fireball.


	3. Track 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Failure.

“I thought you were worthy, Dean,” Cain said, visibly dismissing Sam from his consideration. 

“I was wrong,” Dean admitted. “I’m not the right guy for the Mark. I can’t control it, not like you can.”

Cain frowned, and Dean didn’t think it was just his eyebrows that made him look like he could start throwing lightning bolts if he got angry. “You came to me as a supplicant for this, and now you’re asking me to take it away. I don’t think you know your own mind.”

“Not much there to know. I’m sorry I wasted your time, I am. Please—” The words got tangled up in him the way they always did.

“We don’t always get what we want,” Cain said, each word like a granite block as he rose to his feet. “Some of us never do. Leave now.”

“Hey—” Dean tried.

Cain backhanded him so hard that Dean bounced off the sink, nearly careening into Sam. Dean had been getting weaker and weaker, but mortal danger gave him enough charge to get to his feet, crouched and ready. He didn’t remember calling for it, but the Blade was in his hand. Not Cain’s, he thought with a savage, numbing joy. His teeth were bared and he was ready to tear Cain apart for denying him.

“You don’t get to have a happy ending,” Cain said, advancing until he was just out of range. “You don’t get to do what I couldn’t.”

The Blade in his hand, an enemy in front of him—Dean couldn’t resist. He lunged, turning it into a dive when Cain would’ve planted a foot right in his stomach. He lashed out as he passed, clipping Cain’s hip with the hand not holding the Blade. The kitchen was too small for any momentum; he reversed course and slid over the kitchen table just as Cain grabbed Sam, not even noticing the demon-killing knife Sam had stuck in his gut, and pitched Sam through the door to the living room.

Sam groaned and fell silent.

Calm settled into Dean like ice. His boot struck Cain’s knee as he brought the Blade around towards Cain’s neck. Cain bent backwards like his bones were made of Silly Putty, dodging the killing strike. His hand clamped around Dean’s elbow and it was like being run over by the Impala, a crushing shock. 

They fell, and the Blade was trapped between them, the flat pressed between their bodies and the edge parallel between them. Cain’s weight was suffocating, crushing him into the pitted linoleum floor.

Dean saw a thousand years in the Pit in Cain’s eyes. Cain wanted to die, but if he couldn’t get that, his second prize was Dean, bleeding out in front of Sam, letting Sam see justice done at last. They were frozen in place, Cain’s hand twisting his wrist but Dean not yet giving way. 

He could solve all their problems right now if he just let go. Cain hadn’t bothered anyone in a long time. With Dean out of the way, Cain could go back to his bees and his hope that someone worthy would eventually arrive.

“Dean!” Sam’s voice sounded like he was calling from all the way across a graveyard. “Get up! Fight, dammit!”

Time began to run again. Dean brought his knee up to strike at the vulnerable flesh of Cain’s inner thigh. Cain managed to lift off enough to avoid the worst of it, but that gave Dean the chance to force his hand up and around.

Using the Blade was always ecstasy. When it ripped through Cain’s clothes and tasted his flesh, every fiber in Dean’s body convulsed with lightning-strike pleasure, shoving the Blade’s teeth further in. 

Dean slumped back, not even feeling his head hit the floor. Cain’s dead weight was on him, his hot blood soaking through Dean’s shirt and settling wetly on his skin. He’d come in his pants, which was even more embarrassing than it had been when he was fourteen. Cain’s eyes were grey in death, his mouth open like he had one more thing to say. 

“Dean!” Sam was only a few inches away, scrabbling at Cain to flip him off. His hair was a wild halo around his head as he shoved Cain to the side one-handed, cradling his other arm close to his chest. “Dean.”

Dean blinked up at him. “I guess there’s no way out now,” he said, his ears still ringing. He didn’t need to look at his arm to know that the Mark was glowing, molten gold. He’d given Cain mercy, and he’d locked the chain around his own neck.

****

Objectively speaking, Sam had probably made the wrong call when he’d seen Dean go down under Cain and known, _known_ , that Dean wasn’t going to fight back. Letting Dean sacrifice himself could’ve solved their biggest problem, and let him die human besides.

Objectivity could go fuck itself. Cain had already killed one brother too many. 

And Dean had listened to Sam. That was good, because Dean self-evidently didn’t know how to take care of himself. 

Even Sam’s fractured arm wasn’t all bad. It made Dean attentive and distracted him from his own situation. 

The last time Sam had thought he was the one with all the insights, he’d been instrumental in releasing Lucifer from his cage. He’d learned a lot from that, and from subsequent events, when it turned out that Dean could be just as much of an asshole.

Nobody was infallible. Still, someone needed to be in charge, and it sure as shit wasn’t Dean. Or, sadly, Castiel. And Sam was never going to allow himself to be in a position to get possessed again. That made his options pretty obvious.

****

Just to make sure that things sucked uniformly, Cas told them that he was nearly certain that Hell’s doors were going to peel back like a can of anchovies when Dean went black-eyed again. 

Thank fuck Sam’s broken arm didn’t stop him from finding a shtriga to get the worst of the need out of Dean. Cas came with him to babysit while Dean did the slaughtering. He wasn’t as invulnerable as he’d been as a demon, and he didn’t have little demonic minions to do the herding for him, but the shtriga’s preferred diet of little kids was more than enough incentive to replace all that. Then on the way back from the shtriga they found a standard murderous ghost, and while fire wasn’t quite as good as putting a bullet or a blade into a monster it also made the yawning pit inside him feel a little less wide. He wanted the First Blade back like he used to want to drink until the world stopped, but he was managing not to call it to himself. He didn’t know how long that self-restraint would last.

And when they were two hours out from the Bunker, Dean nearly got into a fight with the gas station attendant who’d sneered at how Cas had offered the Slim Jims to Dean, so proud of himself for finding Dean’s favorite flavor. Cas managed to pull him away before Dean punched the little shit’s head into a smear on the counter, but it was a near miss. Crowley had undersold the ‘need to kill’ part. At least while he was still human, it didn’t get better when it was fed. It just got bigger.

That was the last time they tried to placate the Mark’s need with blood.

When they returned, Sam hadn’t made any progress, or so he said. He seemed too calm for that. Dean made sloppy joes and Sam ate with the distracted intensity he got when his ginormous brain was so active he’d forgotten that he thought food was optional. Pressing Sam wouldn’t get him to talk if he wasn’t ready, and if they did get into an argument Dean wasn’t completely sure he could shut it down before punching started, so Dean just slammed the dirty dishes around instead like a resentful housewife. Which was another comparison that would have to stay completely confidential.

The next day, Cas left to investigate whether Crowley could be taken out before Dean died and rose again. He thought that the resulting chaos might help buy some time, and whoever replaced Crowley wouldn’t have the same hold on Dean. They hoped so, anyway. Maybe he could raise his own demon army and send it against the rest of Hell. That might be fun, even though the thought of being in charge of anything made him want to get in the Impala and drive until he fell off the edge of the continent. 

He wasn’t scared so much as numb. It was starting to hit him just how long a thousand years might be. He wasn’t built on that scale. Without Sam, he’d go out of his mind, not slowly. For all he knew, Abbadon had once been a garden-variety sinner herself, before millennia of overseeing suffering had carved her into her gleeful Joker-self.

Dean promised himself that he was going to stick with straight-up killing for as long as he could. Keeping them wriggling on the rack was for regular demons. It would be beneath him now.

Sam let himself be dragged into binge-watching _Orphan Black_ in Dean’s room—Dean proclaimed that would’ve done any one of the clones and Sarah twice on Sundays (though secretly he thought that Alison was likely the wildest ride, once you got those yoga pants off), and Sam critiqued the science and the misunderstanding of patent law that underlay the entire season. It was a good night, though, shoulder to shoulder, Sam eating the popcorn Dean had dusted with parmesan while Dean tried to figure out if craft beer tasted like crap because he knew how expensive it was or whether that was only the taste of himself rotting from within. 

The next morning he spent five minutes writhing on the floor of the shower before he could make himself get up and go make breakfast. Felt like he had rats in his belly, clawing their way through his stomach and his lungs and all the sloppy, drippy parts. 

That night, he told Sam he didn’t think he was going to last much longer. Honesty fucking sucked.

****

Dean made noises about not wanting Sam to watch him die this time, but shut up pretty quick when he saw Sam’s face, which felt like a leather mask of itself.

“I want it to be in my own bed,” he said, by way of compromise. Sam was a little surprised Dean hadn’t picked the car, but he wasn’t going to argue.

Dean walked through the Devil’s Trap that now spread across the floor of his room without flinching. As a Knight, he hadn’t been bound, but Sam was sure that it was different to not feel it at all. Sam realized that he’d soon know that for himself, and pushed the thought away.

Sam looked around and narrowed his eyes. Something was different about Dean’s room. “Where’d all your decorations go?” he asked.

Dean gave him the #4 Sam-is-a-dumbass look. “I put the weapons in the third storage room on the right, in case you piss me off later.”

Sam hadn’t realized just how bare, how like his own room, Dean’s bedroom would be without all the blades and guns. Just a crate of records, a couple of crumpled-up shirts in a corner and the picture of the Winchesters circa 1983.

Which Dean picked up and thrust towards him. “Better take care of this, too,” he said.

Sam nodded and went to put it by his own mattress. 

When he returned, Dean was coughing wetly. He raised his head from the trashcan, and his lips were bloody. He shrugged and didn’t quite meet Sam’s eyes.

“Does it hurt?” Sam asked, not because he expected the truth but because the nature of Dean’s lie in response would tell him something.

Sure enough, Dean plopped himself down on the bed and folded his arms over his stomach, staring at the blank ceiling. After a pause in which the bunker seemed to grow dimmer and cooler around them, he said, “’s different this time, because I know it’s coming. Feels sort of like the roadies are packing up after a big concert. Taking down the lights, folding the chairs, dumping out the beers.”

Sam nodded as if he understood. His own deaths had never taken long enough for him to notice anything but pain and chaos. 

“You should get some rest,” he said, hating how much the words sounded like an excuse. “I’ll be—I’ll be right back.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dean told him nonchalantly. Sam only wished he could be sure.

Sam hurried, shifting from foot to foot as the microwave worked, nearly fumbling the bottle and not even bothering to cap it again. He didn’t feel the heat when he picked up the mug; he didn’t have time for pain.

Dean was, as promised, lying back on his pillows. His normal crow’s feet were obscured by the lines of pain around his eyes until he detected Sam and smoothed out his expression.

“Hey,” Sam said, kneeling by the bedside, “drink this.” He shaped Dean’s fingers around the mug with his good hand, helping Dean get it to his mouth. Dean huffed, but complied, and his face brightened when he saw the little marshmallows, half-melted into the hot cocoa.

Dean drank deeply, then pushed the mug away. He managed to swallow before being overtaken by another coughing fit. Sam helped him roll towards his side, and Sam didn’t look at the wadded-up tissue that joined many others of its kind in the wastebasket. “Finish your cocoa before it gets cold,” Sam ordered, his voice rough with tears. Dean complied, and the next few minutes were quiet except for the sound of Dean swallowing.

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean said softly as he tried to put the empty mug on his bedside table. When he nearly missed, his eyes widened in shocked realization and leapt up to Sam’s face.

“I can’t watch you suffer,” Sam said needlessly; Dean was already nodding.

“Real sorry it didn’t work out, you know.”

Sam did know: Dean would give up his death wish to stay with Sam, if he could.

“C’mere.” Dean waved his hand, gesturing Sam closer. Sam sat on the edge of the mattress as Dean slumped more and more horizontal, finally lying flat. Sam put his working hand out, spreading the fingers over Dean’s chest, and Dean brought his own hands up to cover Sam’s. Dean blinked, and then his eyes didn’t get past half-mast, and then they closed. Sam was the last thing he’d seen human, again.

Dean’s breath slowed, gaps between each inhale growing longer, each one winding Sam up tighter, his shoulders feeling like they were going to break free of his flesh. His other hand clenched so hard he could feel the old scar ache and the healing bone seemed to grate against itself. He was light-headed from inadvertently imitating Dean’s breathing pattern, interrupted by his own needs for air. 

He’d watched Dean die so often. That this time was almost peaceful didn’t improve matters.

He felt the moment of Dean’s death. The room drained of some intangible energy, gone never to return again. Sam didn’t see a way out of this one.

Careful not to let the Blade touch his own skin, he unwrapped it from its shroud—this wasn’t a weapon that had a scabbard—and put it on Dean’s chest, then carefully moved Dean’s still-warm fingers to curl around the hilt, just like Dean had reported from his previous awakening.

Dean’s last reanimation had taken most of a day, but then Dean had been hurt very badly by Metatron, and maybe it got easier with practice. Sam only had to wait by his bedside for three hours before Dean’s eyes snapped open. Like any predator, Dean knew immediately that Sam was there, even though Sam couldn’t tell if his gaze was moving over Sam’s face any more.

“So,” Sam said. “Feeling better, I hope.”

Dean sat up, loose-limbed. “Sammy,” he drawled. “Don’t feel bad. You did your best.”

“Yeah,” Sam told him. “And now I’m gonna do my worst.”

“Hunh?” Dean’s nose wrinkled and his brow furrowed. “Sam—”

Sam grabbed his arm—not the one holding the Blade, since he still didn’t want to die at Dean’s hand—and flicked his own blade out so that it sliced Dean’s flesh just below the inner elbow. He’d prepared the knife just before he made the drugged cocoa.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want it,” Sam said, over Dean’s roar. “You and me. You don’t have to follow Crowley.”

The blood was flowing freely. Sam wasn’t worried about wasting it. Once Dean was on board the supply would be unlimited.

Their panting breaths were loud in the silence of the bunker, almost in the same rhythm.

“You’d do that?” Sam was almost glad that Dean’s eyes were unreadable. He sounded … younger, almost like the kid Sam had left behind for Stanford a thousand years ago. 

“I’m not letting you go,” he confirmed.

“Aw,” Dean said, a thin shell of mockery over the hope in his tone, “I didn’t know you cared.” 

Sam had his fist in Dean’s shirt and Dean shoved up against the headboard before the last word was finished. “Don’t you ever joke about that. Not you, not now.” 

Dean’s blood smeared across Sam’s skin, down his forearm. Dean’s fingers curled loosely around his wrist. “Okay,” Dean said, softly. He would’ve fought, as a human. Sam was almost sure he’d have preferred being interred in cement for millennia to Sam’s willing corruption. But that person wasn’t home any more, and this Dean was still enough to justify Sam’s plan.

( _That’s junkie talk_ , Crowley’s voice whispered in his brain. _Tell me, moose, are you sure this is all altruism on your part?_ )

Sam closed his eyes and bent his head to his task. Above him, Dean gasped and fell silent. After a few minutes, Sam felt Dean’s fingers in his hair, not pulling or stroking, just resting. 

Dean had put down the Blade.

It took an embarrassingly long time for Sam to realize that he was ever-so-subtly humping Dean’s leg. Humiliated beyond belief, he pulled off, only to see Dean grinning lewdly and somehow also fondly at him. 

Dean brushed Sam’s hair away from his eyes. “Hey,” he said, and Sam’s explanation about Ruby and Pavlovian associations died in his throat. Dean bit his lip, his lashes lowering flirtatiously. “I’m not complainin’,” Dean said. “But if you want me to do more than lie back and think of England you’re gonna have to stop now. I guess you’re just too much man for me.” The way he said it, though—Dean had a hundred ways to say ‘I love you’ and Sam hadn’t noticed most of them until they’d been long abandoned. This, this was a new one.

Sam closed his eyes and let Dean’s hand on the back of his neck drag him down.

****

In Dean’s partial defense, he didn’t delay very long after he started to feel the pull to go to Crowley before admitting it to Sam. They’d needed to know if it was still there, so they hadn’t laden him down with the charms Sam had used before. Putting them back on felt like a loss. And also like calamine lotion on bites, soothing an itch he didn’t dare scratch.

Sam summoned a demon and told it that until Crowley confirmed that he would leave Dean alone, Sam was going to kill every demon he found. Then he exorcised it. “And, I said, I can find a lot,” he explained over dinner (pork chops with apples and spinach; Sam had probably dropped ten pounds while Dean had been distracted by dying, so Dean wasn’t taking any chances). Dean hadn’t been happy to hear about this aspect of Sam’s plan, since he was pretty sure Crowley wouldn’t believe Sam’s ambitions were so small. Not when the Gates of Hell had just closed and then popped open again. But Dean hadn’t known about it until Sam had done it, which Dean guessed was one way to deal with the ‘not interfering with each other’s decisions’ vow, if it still applied when one of them wasn’t human. 

They settled into a pattern. Sam fed; Sam went out and grabbed a demon or two to top off, then destroyed them, saving the hosts whenever possible. It wasn’t usually possible. (On the other hand, no pun intended, Sam’s broken arm wasn’t a problem any more, what with the supernatural boosters.) Those deaths were on Dean, for prying Hell open again, but he felt okay about that. In the long run, he trusted Sam over Crowley. Those poor suckers were part of the price that had to be paid to get there.

Sam was a lot grabbier now, and not just when they were fucking. He got pissed off more easily, and Dean had to stop watching _Dr. Sexy_ because Sam threw a book through the TV when Dr. Sexy was just about to have a threesome with the rich, sexy husband and wife who might donate enough money to save the hospital, if they were happy enough. Dean had to read the forums the next day while Sam was working out to find out what had happened, and then he had to order a new TV. Getting fucked up against the wall had been fun, though.

A week in, they got hit by gremlins, about forty of them, who managed to break the Bunker door down and invade the main hall. These weren’t little Mogwai gremlins either, but scaly beasts out of Jim Henson’s worst nightmares. Sam didn’t even lift his hand. He closed his eyes and lifted his shoulders and all of them, except for the leader, just—popped. The room looked like there’d been a mudfight minus the hot chicks in bikinis. Dean grimaced, because guess who got to clean up all that shit, but he wasn’t going to get into it with Sam while the remaining gremlin was still there, filthy now and struck dumb by Sam’s show of force.

“This ain’t your fight, dude,” Dean advised. “I were you, I’d get my ass back underground and wait until the big boys are done fighting.”

The gremlin snarled—Dean was guessing this was another Crowley-subverted alpha, because it was bigger and scalier and in general gave off the impression of being more of a tank than a lizard. Oh well. Dean had given it a warning, which was more than he did for most. A glance at Sam confirmed Sam’s lack of objection to Dean getting a little practice in.

Given that it took Dean the better part of ten minutes to take it down and then required new brickwork to repair the Bunker, Dean thought it really had been an alpha.

****

Castiel returned on a Thursday. He hadn’t even asked to be present for Dean’s death and resurrection; there’d be no handprints for Dean this time. Sam jogged up to the door and added the special sigil that allowed him inside. He saw Castiel noting that it wasn’t there permanently, and he felt a little guilty, but not very.

After five minutes of staring at Sam, during which Castiel three times turned down Dean’s increasingly nervous offers of beer, the angel raised his head like a hawk spotting prey. “You’re drinking demon blood.”

Sam didn’t let his shoulders tense up. He’d known this was coming. “What did you think I was going to do?” Sam asked.

“Not this.” Castiel glowered at both of them. Dean had that hangdog look that Dad or Bobby could produce in him. “Dean, you must know the risks—”

“Hey,” Dean said, “Lucifer’s still in his cage. Long as that’s true, Sam’s time of the month is just gonna be month-long, that’s all. I’m not saying the ‘roid rage is awesome, but if anybody can beat Crowley at his game, you know it’s Sam.” He leaned against the kitchen counter, loose-limbed in jeans and flannel over his Metallica T-shirt, as relaxed as he’d been in years. Sam was warmed by his trust.

“To what end, Dean?” Castiel demanded, not mollified. “I had hoped you would choose Cain’s path. Withdraw from the world, avoid violence.”

“Love bees?” Sam suggested. What was it with supernatural creatures and bees, he wondered. “The endgame is simple. Lucifer wasn’t wrong about one thing: demons shouldn’t exist.”

“None taken,” Dean said reproachfully, waggling his beer. 

Sam ignored his brother. He might not need Castiel for this plan, but Castiel striving against him could throw some pretty large, winged spanners in the works.

“When we take over, we’re going to go through Hell until there’s no one left on the rack. I know we can’t cut off the supply of the damned. But we can make it … peaceful.”

“Better than rewind Heaven,” Dean muttered. Sam wasn’t so sure of that, but it was good if Dean thought so. If the peace had to come from the grave, well, Sam had wanted that so badly himself that he wasn’t going to deny any soul an ending.

Castiel listened expressionlessly, the way he always did. Honestly, he was the most likely of all of them to be convinced by reason. If Sam could sway him, then there’d be confirmation that the plan made sense.

After a nearly unbearable pause, Castiel moved closer, putting his hands on the back of a chair and leaning a bit on it. “Very well. ‘I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’”

“Hunh?” and “When did you learn _Macbeth_?” they asked simultaneously.

“Metatron downloaded all of human literature into my head,” Castiel explained, if you could call that explaining. “I’m experimenting with cultural references.”

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Dean said, and took another swig. Sam wasn’t sure whether he meant the specific quote or the general practice.

“Great,” Sam said brightly. “Because we could really use your help keeping Crowley out of here until we’re ready.”

“I have been attempting to do so,” Castiel said. “I understand that the alphas are now working together in highly coordinated fashion. The angels are … nervous.”

Dean was already rifling through the fridge, the line of his back saying ‘told you so’ because he knew better than to say it to Sam’s face. “You can explain over dinner,” he said, muffled. “Burgers okay?”

Dinner was marginally less tense than it could’ve been, even when Sam put his hand high up on Dean’s thigh. Dean’s mouth thinned, but he didn’t wrench himself away until Castiel had already noticed. Showing off might’ve been a mistake, but Castiel was the friendliest angel they knew and he’d spin it for the others, Sam hoped. He just didn’t—Castiel needed to understand that Dean was his. Castiel could have all of Heaven instead; it was a fair trade.

****

Sam was in the library researching his next trip—Dean still didn’t like being cooped up in here, and Sam bringing back a couple of ghouls for Dean to dispatch last time hadn’t been satisfying either, especially since Sam had rented a _trailer_ , not even caring what that did to the Impala’s suspension. Seriously, it was like the kid deliberately did it to piss him off. Or more likely to give him a repair project to occupy his time, after the ghouls and the latest season of _Orange Is the New Black_ were ended.

Point being, Dean was about bored out of his infernal mind when Sam looked up from his computer and said, “Dean? Would you bring me that pencil?”

The pencil was probably twenty inches away from him on the table, and Dean was almost on the other side of the room, near the kitchen. Dean raised an eyebrow. “Somethin’ happen to your arms, Sammy?”

Sam’s face contracted into full bitchface. “Dean, I want you to bring me that pencil.”

Dean felt a tug, like there was a meathook in his chest again. Holy fuck, Sam was—

“No,” he said. He needed to fight as hard as he could. Crowley wasn’t going to die easy.

Sam’s eyes narrowed further, his lips pursing. Dean would’ve found it hilarious if he’d had the energy. He wasn’t going to let some punk-ass little brother boss him around. That went against the natural order. The tugging intensified, until he was jerked off of the table he’d been leaning against.

“No!” he said again, clenching his fists and snarling, feeling his eyes flicker black as he dropped the pretense. Being Sam’s bitch wasn’t much better than being Crowley’s, and now he was really struggling. One dragging step forward, then another.

Dean yowled, furious. Sam’s face was drawn, a trickle of blood flowing from his left nostril, and Dean wanted it _everywhere_. The Mark was supposed to make him strong, not put him on his knees for every wanna-be King of Hell.

Sam had his hand up now, pulling on nothing. “My brother,” he said, nearly breathless with effort. “Our blood. _My Knight_.”

Dean wasn’t too sure what happened next, except that he was pressed up against Sam—bastard was lucky he hadn’t put the pencil through his damned shoulder; Dean’s fist was closed so tight around it he could feel it splintering—and Sam was grinning, lips bloody and eyes wild.

“Sam.” Dean dropped the pencil and put his hands on Sam’s face. “Sammy.” He could feel his own smile stretching his face past the point of comfort. 

“Say it,” Sam ordered.

Dean’s pride twitched. But he’d served far worse without wanting it—Alastair and Heaven and Crowley all—and despite their test-fight just now, this was what he’d hoped for. “’m your Knight,” he said. Then he kissed Sam’s bloody mouth, kissed him until Sam swung them around and shoved Dean down on the table, the better to reach his arm for a quick feed before the fuck.

Sam drained him until he was weak. But then Sam did all the work, letting Dean lie back and take it. Dean stared up at him, blinking only when he had to. He knew his eyes were mirrors. He didn’t think Sam could see his own eyes reflected now, tiny images going on to infinity inside each other, but Sam might not have noticed anyway, too busy with his biceps cording and his teeth gritted as he panted Dean’s name. Dean hitched his legs around Sam’s hips and let Sam shove him up and back. He felt so light that he might’ve just floated away without Sam’s cock to anchor him.

Afterwards, Sam collapsed on him, panting into his shoulder. Sam smelled just the same underneath the sweet metal and sulfur of their blood—like old books and hard fights. He was so heavy it was a good thing Dean didn’t much need to breathe, all muscle and golden skin and romance hero hair above him.

Dean idly bit at the line of his shoulder.

“Stoppit,” Sam mumbled, not like he meant it. “Gonna go grab a couple more demons, top off before we go after Crowley.” But he didn’t move.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean agreed, not as angry as he usually was about the prospect of Sam drinking alone. Right now, Sam would be about as superpower-safe as he could get without Dean at his side.

****

Sam had planned to drive out to Ohio, where there were signs indicating a large cluster of demons. But his last-minute check of the bunker’s security cameras showed that he wasn’t going to make it that far.

People—possessed humans, he had no doubt—were converging on the bunker like waves of fans on a rock concert. There must’ve been hundreds. They couldn’t get past the defenses, Sam was pretty sure, but they could definitely make going out for pizza difficult.

Of course they were all wearing black suits. And of course the only exception was the brown-suited dandy in the lead.

Evidently they’d managed to piss Crowley off.

Sam didn’t realize he was smiling until Dean whacked his shoulder and told him to cut it out, psycho, they needed to prep.

**** 

“Hey, Sam,” Dean said, as they headed up the stairs, past the wards that Sam had customized to keep all the other demons out. “You didn’t see Lucifer out there, did you?”

“What?” Sam sourfaced at him. “No.”

“Good,” Dean told him. “For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.”

Sam shook his head, his eyes soft in a way that was all Dean’s now, and opened the door.


End file.
